Chawkbazar fire originated from chemicals in Wahed Mansion: IEB probe

The devastating fire in Old Dhaka’s Chawkbazar started at Wahed Mansion used for storing chemical, not by gas cylinder of any vehicle or restaurant, The Institution of Engineers, Bangladesh or IEB has concluded after an investigation.

“We are 100 per cent sure that the fire originated from chemical, nothing else,” IEB General Secretary Khandker Manjur Morhsed said on Tuesday.

“If the fire had started from something else, it would have spread from below. But there was no transformer or cylinder blast. Everything was alright,” he added, disputing previous claims by building owners of the congested area and a government minister.

The four-storey building which suffered most damage in the fire has two sections – Wahed Manzil and Wahed Mansion.

The ground floor of the Mansion housed around a dozen shops while the first floor was used as warehouses of high pressure deodorant canisters and raw plastic granules. Different families lived in the rest of the building.

Fire service officials also found a huge amount of highly combustible materials stashed in the basement of Wahed Manzil. The fire crews shivered to imagine what would have happened had the fire reached the basement of the building, reports bdnews24.com.

The IEB report blamed the storage of flammables on the first floor of the building for the monstrosity of the fire.

No-one could confirm the reason behind the fire, but the IEB investigators assume a spark from an electric switch or any inadvertently started flame might have acted as a trigger.

The report noted many claimed that CCTV and mobile phone camera footages suggested the fire had started from outside the Wahed Mansion and then destroyed a number of vehicles and five buildings at an intersection of two narrow streets in Chawkbazar’s Churihatta.

But one of the videos showed air-freshener canisters falling onto the street after an explosion, which suggests the fire had started from the first floor of Wahed Mansion, according to the report.

The huge amount of flammables caused erosion of some wall and cement coating in the building, but Wahed Manzil was not significantly damaged as the fire did not spread much inside due to a lack of oxygen. The fire spread towards the street instead, the report said.

Asked how they became certain that the fire originated from the first floor of the Wahed Mansion, former IEB president Md Nurul Huda, who headed the investigation, said they found “direct evidence” of explosion on that floor.

“We’ve examined it from all three sides. The wall would have fallen inwards had the blast occurred outside. But the wall fell outside much the same way what happens to a wall when an explosion occurs inside a room,” he said.

“We’ve also found that the things stored in the room moved outwards. It made us to deduce that the fire broke out from inside, not outside,” he added.

The IEB submitted the report, including some recommendations, to Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina on Mar 1, the institution’s General Secretary Morshed said.

“Our observations, description of the site, reasons behind the fire – everything is there in the report,” he said.

The IEB has also recommended an elaborate forensic investigation at the site to find out the origin of the fire as there are different claims.

The IEB formed an investigation committee headed by Huda two days after the fire burnt down the vehicles and buildings overnight on Feb 20, killing at least 67 people on the spot. Four others succumbed to burn injuries in hospital.

Kazi Khairul Bashar, an assistant general secretary of the institution, worked as the member secretary of the committee. The others in the committee were IEB Central Council members Hamidul Hoque and Munaz Ahmed Noor, and Yasir Arafat from its electrical and electronic engineering department and Kazi Bayzid Kabir from chemical engineering department.

The government has formed five committees to investigate the incident. These are of the home ministry, disaster management and relief ministry, Fire Service and Civil Defence, and Dhaka South City Corporation.

After the fire crews finally managed to put out the flames, Industries Minister Nurul Majid Mahmud Humayun blamed gas cylinder explosion for the fire.

Owners of buildings and chemical warehouses in the area also made the same claim. Some others said an explosion of an electric transformer caused the fire.

Investigators of different agencies, however, found no evidence of gas cylinder or electric transformer blast in the site.

They pointed the finger at the flammables stored in Wahed Mansion.

The IEB investigators also said they found no electric transformer and no evidence of electric malfunction at the site.