YET another fire that broke out in a hotel, housed in a multi-use six-storey building, at Shahjadpur in Dhaka on March 3, leaving four boarders dead, brings to the fore some issues that relevant authorities have ignored for years. The authorities appear to be waking up to reality after every such fire but they forget to continue to act on the issues soon after the furore dies down. In the case at hand, the fire broke out on the first floor of the building, where the hotel occupies all floors from the second to the fifth, about noon. One of the four was found dead inside a bathroom and the other three at the base of a stairwell where the door was locked. The ground floor, which did not catch fire, housed a photo studio and the first floor, where the fire broke out, housed a beauty parlour which is reported to have been closed since July 2024, when it became damaged during the July uprising clashes. The parlour owner says that it had two air-conditioners and a refrigerator.
A witness says that most of the neighbouring houses declined any help when they were approached for water. This helped the fire to spread quickly. Two fire engines from the Baridhara station could put out the flames in less than an hour, fire officials said. The Gulshan police, who said in the evening on March 3 that they were trying to establish the identity of three of the victims, said that legal steps would be taken in this connection. But what the authorities first need to do is to establish how the fire broke out and if the building, apparently a residential building but has been used for mixed uses, had the permission to run a hotel. The authorities should also establish whether the hotel had been well inspected in terms of fire safety measures as the four upper floors of the building were entirely used as a hotel. Big fires in high rises, factories, chemical warehouses, and eateries and restaurants in the capital city have earlier made the headlines. They all have pointed out the inadequacy on part of a number of public authorities and agencies largely resulting from poor institutional frameworks or deliberately lackadaisical approaches, understandably due to moneyed or political clout. But the issues have almost never been adequately attended to by any of the authorities concerned.
This continues to leave people at fire risks, sometimes causing fire and consequent death, a number of them or a few. Yet, the authorities have not woken up to the reality to decisively deal with the issue for the better. It is already time that the government did this.