DHAKA: A top investigator probing last week’s garment factory disaster in Bangladesh yesterday blamed vibrations from four illegal generators for the collapse of the building which killed more than 500 workers.
The preliminary findings of the government probe, as described by lead investigator Main Uddin Khandaker, gave the clearest explanation yet for the catastrophic structural failure.
“Four huge generators were set up on each of the top floors where garment factories were located, violating rules,” Khandaker, a senior home ministry official, said.
“When these generators were started after a power cut they created vibration, and together with the vibration of thousands of sewing machines, they triggered the collapse,” he said.
“Within five minutes the building caved in and sandwiched into one floor like a pack of cards,” he said, adding a final probe report would be submitted after the conclusion of the recovery operation.
Khandaker said the building, Rana Plaza, was built “for commercial use”, not for a factory, and it could not withstand the vibrations because the owner used sub-standard rods, bricks and other materials to construct it.
It also emerged yesterday that an engineer who had warned that the building may be unsafe before it imploded on April 24 was being questioned by police after becoming the latest person to be arrested over the disaster.
With bulldozers clawing away at the mountain of rubble at the site, the number of bodies being recovered from the country’s deadliest industrial disaster has been increasing sharply.
Captain Shakiur Rahman, an officer in a special army control room set up to coordinate the rescue operation, said the “death toll now stands at 525”.
Dozens more people are thought to have been buried alive after the eight-storey building collapsed in Savar, which lies around 30 kilometres to the northwest of the capital Dhaka.
Civil engineer Abdur Razzaq Khan was detained on Thursday night after police said he had given the building the all-clear on April 23 after inspecting the cracks.
Khan was quoted as telling one Bengali newspaper, Jugantor, on the night before the tragedy that the building was “risky” and should be the subject of “further investigation”.
His nephew Talebur Rahman, who is a fellow director of his engineering consultancy, said: “We don’t know why he is being made a scapegoat or why they arrested him. Did they arrest him for warning of the danger?”
Dhaka deputy police chief A B M Masud Hossain said investigators found that Khan had cleared the building to continue operating while also suggesting the owner seek further advice.
AFP
