Rescue workers trying to reach 90 people trapped under the rubble of a collapsed factory in Bangladesh yesterday warned that time was running out to find survivors, as the death toll reached 25.
Firefighters, police and army engineers used shovels and their bare hands in a desperate search for anyone still alive after the nine-story building fell early on Monday, while officials said cries for help from beneath the rubble had stopped.
Around 100 people had been brought out alive but the rescue operation was being hampered by a lack of concrete cutting equipment, they said.
"We are still doing things manually; we cannot use lifting equipment because we have to use caution in case there are people still alive underneath the debris," said army Brigadier General Nizam Ahmed, the head of the rescue operation.
The illegally constructed building housing the Spectrum Sweater and Knitting Industries factory at Palash Bari, 30km northwest of the capital, collapsed like a house of cards after a boiler exploded. It had been packed with night-shift workers.
Firefighters were busy digging through the debris from the top of the collapsed building.
"Level after level of concrete slabs are pressed together. All we have been able to do is break through a few of them at certain points," Ahmed said.
Salim Newaz Khan, director general of Dhaka fire brigade, said it would take at least three more days to reach all those trapped.
"The likelihood of survival for the trapped people is getting less all the time," he said.
The death toll stood at 25, said a spokesman for the Rapid Action Battalion security force. Ninety-one people had been reported missing by relatives and 108 people had been rescued alive, the spokesman said.
Most of those rescued from the building were injured in the crush, officials said.
Survivors said they heard a loud explosion just before the building collapsed.
"Within two or three minutes, the whole building started to shake violently," said Mahubur Rahman, 30, who had been working on the fourth floor with about 90 other people.
A crowd of several thousand, including distraught relatives, continued to wait at the scene yesterday for news of the missing workers.
The owners of the factory said in a statement they would pay compensation to victims, the official BSS news agency said.
City planning officials quoted by the news agency said the factory had been constructed on marshland without planning permission.
The garment industry is Bangladesh's biggest export sector, employing about 1.8 million lowly paid workers.
Poor safety standards in the industry frequently result in accidents, claiming scores of lives.
Meanwhile, a tropical storm has swept through southern Bangladesh, killing at least six people, injuring about 25 and leveling dozens of flimsy homes, police said yesterday.
The bodies of a mother and her teenage daughter were recovered from the debris of their tin-roof hut after Monday's storm in Patuakhali district, a police official said on condition of anonymity.
He said lightning struck and killed four farmers working in rice fields in another part of Patuakhali, 152km south of the capital.
Fifteen of the 25 people injured in the storm were taken to hospitals, the official said.
Rainstorms are common at this time of the year in Bangladesh. Last week, storms killed four people in the north of the country and at least 80 others were killed across the country last month.
RSS