Fire-fighters and traders make hectic efforts to extinguish the fire that broke out at the furniture shops at City Gate in Cornel Haat area of Chittagong city on Friday morning. — Focus Bangla CHITTAGONG, Feb 16: As many as 23 furniture showrooms and factories were gutted in a devastating fire at the Chittagong City Gate area on Friday.
Fire fighters said the fire erupted from one of the furniture factories and quickly spread to the adjacent showrooms and factories near the Mir Filling Station beside the Dhaka-Chittagong Highway.
Deputy Assistant Director of the Fire Service Department Md Jashim Uddin said the incident occurred at around 8.15pm from a furniture factory.
There was no human casualty.
Fire fighters from the Sitakunda fire station and the city stations extinguished the fire after four to five hours of hectic efforts. They faced problems with fighting the fire because of inflammable goods in the shops made of timber.
Hundreds of wooden and steel furniture factories have been set up along the Chittagong-Dhaka-highway on the eastern and western sides of the highway depending on the supply of old and used furniture of scrap vessels from the Sitakunda ship-breaking and recycling yards over the last 30 years.
However, a news agency reported that the fire gutted at least 100 shops, including 15 furniture shops, and an ATM booth of the Dutch Bangla Bank Ltd.
Mahbub Rashid, owner of a furniture shop of the market, alleged that a powerful group had been trying long for evicting the shop owners from the area. The group might be behind the fire incident.
The affected shop owners said that the estimated loss caused by the fire would be around Tk 300 million (30 crore).
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