SAVAR, Bangladesh — Deep cracks visible in the walls of a Bangladesh garment
building had compelled police to order it evacuated a day before it
collapsed, officials said Thursday. More than 200 people were killed
when the eight-story building splintered into a pile of concrete because
factories based there ignored the order and kept more than 2,000 people
working.
Wednesday's disaster in the Dhaka suburb of Savar is the worst ever
for Bangladesh's booming and powerful garment industry, surpassing a
fire less than five months earlier that killed 112 people. Workers at
both sites made clothes for major brands around the world; some of the
companies in the building that fell say their customers include retail
giants such as Wal-Mart.
Hundreds of rescuers, some
crawling through the maze of rubble in search of survivors and corpses,
worked through the night and into Thursday amid the cries of the trapped
and the wails of workers' relatives gathered outside the building,
called Rana Plaza. It housed numerous garment factories and a handful of other companies.
An Associated Press cameraman who went into the rubble with rescue workers
spoke briefly to a garment worker pinned face down in the darkness
between concrete slabs and next to two corpses. Mohammad Altab pleaded
for help, but they were unable to free him.
"Save us, brother. I beg you, brother. I want to live," Altab moaned. "It's so painful here ... I have two little children."
Another survivor, whose voice could be heard from deep in the rubble, wept as he called for help.
"We want to live, brother. It's hard to remain alive here. It would
have been better to die than enduring such pain to live on. We want to
live. Please save us," the man cried.
After the cracks were reported in the walls of Rana Plaza on Tuesday,
managers of a local bank that also had an office in the building
evacuated their workers. The garment factories, though, kept working,
ignoring the instructions of the local industrial police, said
Mostafizur Rahman, a director of that paramilitary police force.
The Bangladesh Garment Manufacturers and Exporters Association had
also asked the factories to suspend work starting Wednesday morning,
hours before the collapse.
"After we got the crack reports, we asked them to suspend work until
further examination, but they did not pay heed," said Atiqul Islam, the
group's president.
On Thursday morning, the odor of rotting bodies wafted through holes
cut into the building. Bangladesh's junior minister for home affairs,
Shamsul Haque, said that by late Thursday morning 2,000 people had been
rescued from the wreckage.
Brig. Gen. Mohammed Siddiqul Alam Shikder, who is overseeing army
rescue teams, said the death toll had climbed to 203 by Thursday
afternoon.
Dozens of bodies, their faces
covered, were laid outside a local school building so relatives could
identify them. Thousands of workers' relatives gathered outside the
building, waiting for news, and thousands of garment workers from nearby factories took to the streets across the industrial zone in protest.
Shikder said rescue operations were progressing slowly and carefully to save as many people as possible.
He said rescue teams were standing by with heavy equipment and would
"start bulldozing the debris once we get closer to the end of the
operation. But now we are careful."
He also said the huge crowd that remained at the collapse site Thursday was interfering with getting more rescuers to the scene.
"We are ready with about 1,000 soldiers and rescue workers from other
departments. But a huge crowd is obstructing our effort," he said.
Thousands of workers from the hundreds of other garment factories in
the Savar industrial zone took to the streets to protest the factory
collapse and poor safety standards for the country's garment workers.
Television reports said that hundreds of protesting workers also
clashed with police in Dhaka and the nearby industrial zone of Ashulia.
It was not immediately clear whether there were any injuries in those
clashes.
The garment manufacturers' group said the factories in Rana Plaza
employed 3,122 workers, but it was not clear how many were in the
building when it collapsed.
Searchers worked through the night to probe the jumbled mass of
concrete with drills or their bare hands, passing water and flashlights
to people pinned inside.
"I gave them whistles, water, torchlights. I heard them cry," said
fire official Abul Khayer late Wednesday, as he prepared to work late
into the night.
Abdur Rahim, an employee who worked on the fifth floor, said he and
his co-workers had gone inside Wednesday morning despite the cracks in
the building, after a factory manager gave assurances that it was safe.
About an hour later, the building collapsed. The next thing Rahim
remembered was regaining consciousness outside.
Abdul Halim, an official with the engineering department in Savar,
said the owner was originally allowed to construct a five-story building
but added another three stories illegally.
On a visit to the site, Home Minister Muhiuddin Khan Alamgir told
reporters the building had violated construction codes and that "the
culprits would be punished."
Local police chief Mohammed Asaduzzaman said police and the
government's Capital Development Authority have filed separate cases of
negligence against the building owner.
Habibur Rahman, police superintendent of the Dhaka district,
identified the building owner as Mohammed Sohel Rana, a local leader of
ruling Awami League's youth front. Rahman said police were also looking
for the owners of the garment factories.
Among the garment makers in the building were Phantom Apparels,
Phantom Tac, Ether Tex, New Wave Style and New Wave Bottoms. Altogether,
they produced several million shirts, pants and other garments a year.
The New Wave companies, according to their website, make clothing for
major brands including North American retailers The Children's Place
and Dress Barn, Britain's Primark, Spain's Mango and Italy's Benetton.
Ether Tex said Wal-Mart, the world's biggest retailer, was one of its
customers.
Primark acknowledged it was using a factory in Rana Plaza, but many
other retailers distanced themselves from the disaster, saying they were
not involved with the factories at the time of the collapse or had not
recently ordered garments from them.
Benetton said in an email to The Associated Press that people
involved in the collapse were not Benetton suppliers. Wal-Mart said it
was investigating and Mango said it had only discussed production of a
test sample of clothing with one of the factories.
The November factory fire that killed 112 people drew international attention to working conditions in Bangladesh's
$20 billion-a-year textile industry, but Wednesday's collapse
highlighted that workers still face danger. The country has about 4,000
garment factories and exports clothes to leading Western retailers, and
industry leaders hold great influence in the South Asian nation.
Bangladesh's garment industry was the third-largest in the world in
2011, after China and Italy. It has grown rapidly over the past decade, a
boom fueled by some of the lowest labor costs in the world. The
national minimum wage, which was doubled in 2010, stands at $38 per
month.
The Tazreen factory that caught
fire in November lacked emergency exits, and its owner said only three
floors of the eight-story building were legally built. Surviving
employees said gates had been locked and managers had told them to go
back to work after the fire alarm went off.
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