Life becoming increasingly dangerous in capital

Syed Shemul Parvez :
Disasters like fire incidents and explosions are rising alarmingly in the capital city. The mega city’s tall buildings are competing with each other to touch the sky, but the fatal accidents one after another shows the city’s tall buildings have become virtual death traps.
Sometimes buildings are collapsing, sometimes terrible fires are occurring, and at other times gas containers are exploding. As a result, lives are being perished.
According to experts the Dhaka city has become as dangerous as a time bomb! It has become especially vulnerable to natural disaster like earthquake.
According to the information from the Ministry of Disaster Management, there are at least 72,000 vulnerable buildings are at risk of collapse across the capital city.
These unplanned residential and commercial buildings have faulty gas and electricity connections. Accidents are happening one after another as a result of this. No visible actions are being taken as yet in this regard.
When asked why the buildings in the capital are so accident-prone, the fire service and civil defense authorities said that construction of buildings without following rules, unsafe gas and electricity connections, failure to repair faulty connections, and lack of safety systems in buildings are the main reasons for the accidents that occurred in recent years.
Director General of Fire Service Brigadier General Main Uddin said, the Rajdhani Unnayan Kartripakkha (RAJUK) approves an average of 10 to 15 thousand buildings per year. But on an average, more than 90,000 buildings are being built every year.
The Bangladesh National Building Code (BNBC) must be maintained, he said.
In such a situation, experts say, major disasters can happen at any time. And for this, the negligence of the service organizations and the ignorance of the people are responsible.
Urban and environmentalist architect Iqbal Habib said, “Fires can occur after an earthquake, because numerous gas lines are spread like a net under the city. Titus Gas Authority does not even have its design. They do not know where the gas lines are! Again, they are not being renovated. If they explode, a huge amount of gas will be released.”
Fire service insists on ensuring autovalving system in every building to prevent accidents.
Autovalving will automatically shut off the gas connection to all buildings when a certain level of vibration is sensed. And it will be possible to reduce the accidents related to gas explosion by hundred percent, Iqbal Habib said.
When asked, Professor Dr. Zillur Rahman, chairman of disaster science and climate resilience of Dhaka University (DU) told The New Nation that besides natural disaster, at present we are facing some manmade disaster due to increased in use of chemical for the modern construction and life.
Bangladesh’s fire service team has to be more trained and numbers of employees and equipments must be enhanced by the government initiatives to control such disasters, he said.
Does the government take enough initiatives to tackle the situation, when asked this question Dr. Zillur Rahamn said undoubtedly the government was taking adequate steps to face such situation by adopting some small, medium and largest instruments.
In this issue, the government has already allotted Tk two and a half thousand crore to face such disasters. Over all our people have to be more conscious about this issue, he added.