Another Banani fire victim dies at CMH

A victim of the devastating Banani fire, who was undergoing treatment at Combined Military Hospital (CMH), died on Saturday morning, raising the death toll to 26.
The deceased identified as Abu Hena Mustafa Kamal had been undergoing treatment with severe burn injuries at CMH in Dhaka cantonment since Thursday night.
He was a senior executive of Heritage Air Express Ltd housed on the 10th floor of the fire-hit FR Tower, said Dhaka Metropolitan Police (DMP) deputy commissioner (Gulshan division) Mostaq Ahmed.
On the day, the police lodged a regular case with Banani Police Station in connection with the fire incident at the 22-storey FR Tower located at Kemal Ataturk Avenue in the city's
Banani area, Mr Ahmed told the FE.
But it could not be known immediately who were shown accused in the case.
The bodies of all 25 fire victims, recovered from the building on Thursday night, had already been handed over to their respective families.
About a hundred people also suffered minor to serious burn injuries in the fire. At least 22 of them are now undergoing treatment at different hospitals.
Meanwhile, different government departments have formed four separate committees to investigate the cause of the fire.
A nine-member probe committee formed by the disaster management and relief ministry with additional secretary Foyzur Rahman as its head visited the fire-hit high-rise building on the day.
After the visit Mr Rahman said, "We have seen that the seventh, eighth and ninth floors of the building were burnt to ashes, but it wasn't clear to us how the fire originated."
The committee members will talk to the fire survivors till Sunday aiming to establish the origin of the fire, he added.
It is pretty clear that the building lacks fire safety measures, he also said, adding that existing fire extinguishers in different offices come to no help during emergency.
The government official expressed the hope that the probe report of his ministry would be submitted by April 3.
Another six-member probe committee formed by the home ministry and led by its additional secretary Tarun Kanti Shikder also visited the spot on the day.
After the visit, Mr Shikder told reporters that most of the people died inside the building during the fire incident because of narrow staircase for emergency exit.
"The emergency exit is only 24 inches in width," he said, adding that due to dissimilar interior designs on different floors adjacent to the staircase, panicked people couldn't go up or down from one floor to another.
The housing and public works ministry has formed a six-member committee to find out whether there was any fault in the design and construction of FR Tower.
Headed by the ministry's additional secretary Yakub Ali Patwary, the committee was asked to submit its report within seven working days.
Fire Service and Civil Defence also set up a five-member committee to determine the origin of the devastating fire.
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