Firefighters in Bangladesh brought a blaze at a container depot under control on Tuesday, three days after fiery explosions killed at least 43 people at a facility that a senior fire service official suspected had not followed safety guidelines.
Drone footage showed smoke and rows of burnt-out containers from the fire that began late on Saturday, triggering blasts and blazes at Sitakunda, 40km from Chittagong. Authorities have not determined the cause of the disaster but suspect a container of hydrogen peroxide was the source.
“The fire has not been put out completely but there is no risk of further explosion as our team has sorted out the chemical containers... one by one,” senior fire service official Monir Hossain told Reuters.
He said even basic fire-safety measures had not been implemented with only a handful of extinguishers in a depot storing dozens of containers full of everything from clothes to chemicals.
“We haven’t found any basic fire safety measures ... There were simply some extinguishers. Nothing else. They didn’t even follow storage guidelines for hazardous chemicals,” Hossain said.
The director of the facility, the BM Container Depot, did not answer calls to his mobile telephone seeking comment.
Shipping group Maersk said it would fully cooperate with the authorities in case its support was needed in the investigation. “We are in touch with our customers to keep them informed on the status of their cargo as and when we have confirmed information coming through,” it said.
