Update 3: NTV MD Enaetur Rahim arrested, Hummer H2 seized.
Update 2: NTV back on air with test transmission from 6 pm. Blag flag badge shows next to station logo.
Update 1: Anisul Haque’s op-ed on fire: We have carefully created hell on earth (Prothom Alo, Feb 27, 2007)
Helicopter Rescue
We have made Dhaka city a death trap, and we saw that one more time today….It was not yet eleven, and already the incredible traffic jam on Nazrul Islam avenue. How will the fire engine get here?…I called Marina, her colleague Ali Bhai answered. Call Radio Today and tell them announce that people shouldn’t use this road, the road needs to be clear. Already there were thousands of people jamming the streets. A few fire trucks were trying to pour meager water spurts on the building. I looked up, hundreds begging for rescue from the roof. Marina called, Shuchi (NTV director) had called, tell them to send helicopters.

Somebody said, Shupon Roy is trapped inside. Shumona Sharmin called, RTV news editor Ishtiaqur Raza had called on the mobile, do something please. Save me, we won’t survive much longer. Where were all our journalist friends? Had Imdadul Huq Milon come to the office? Ataus Samad? Poet Faruk Ahmed? Who was in the NTV office? NTV Producer Alfred Khokon? Shikriti? Had Mahmuduzzaman Babu gone in to tape his show on Lalon? KM Harun or Kausar Chowdhury of RTV?

I collapsed on the street and started crying. Because there was nothing else I could do. There was a small doba behind Prothom Alo’s office, full of greenish water. Fire workers rushed there to try to pump up that water. After they set it up, not a drop of water was coming out. God knows if they had ever tested that pump.

In the sky, the helicopter was circling. Army, Rab, Police, Fire Dept, everyone running around. BUt the fire kept climbing up. A ladder from the 4th floor was bringing people down, one person at a time. How will they get this many people down? I couldn’t stand it any more! There are locked collapsible gates on many of the floors of NTV? Why were they locked? What have we made in our Dhaka city with all that white money, black money, foreign aid? All these death traps? Nizamuddin Sir published many photos of building in Daily Star and showed us, you can’t just have stairs next to elevators, you need fire escapes!

Everything has an international rule. In our country, we don’t follow any of those rules. In every one of our buildings, we have kept nothing like open windows, balconies, nothing…Even after all this, some people are sticking their head out of windows and waving their hands for rescue. If our neighboring Prothom Alo office caught on fire, we would not even be able to do that. We are surrounded by a steel net. We would all become kababs and die.

In every civilized nation there are fire hybrants on every block..Our Wasa water lines have none of those things. We don’t leave a single inch of land free when building house. We have never even thought that the fire service may have to enter. We have choked up every one of our water areas. Every lake is filled up. Every pond has closed up. There used to be a lake from behind Sonargaon hotel to Rampura. Now there is a skyscraper there, CNG stations, owned by government people. We have very carefully built a multi-storied hell. If there is ever an earthquake, we cannot imagine even in our nightmares what could happen…we can;’t even handle a fire in a 12 storey building, what will we do if fire hits a 24 storey building?

I felt totally helpless. Ajoy da was crying over there, his sister works in that building.

Fire service keeps trying. They have the machines, the machines don’t work. The amount of money, labor and attention we spent on killing people, we didn’t make any preparations to save people. We do CrossFire or Operation Clean Heart, so people die of heart attack or from Encounter. We spend millions to import the sort of tear gas that burns to ashes your eyes. But for rescue mission or disaster prevention, we spend nil. All our police and soldiers who are on the spot, none of them even have helmets on their heads. No oxygen masks. No fireproof clothing. What are these people going to do?

In Marina’s international aid office, they have fire drills once a week. I have never heard of those things happening in any Bengali office. Fire alarm, fire exit, fire escape, fire extinguisher– we live without these things, we make do without these things. But when it comes to placing expensive marble, gorgeous furniture– we spend every penny necessary.

The caretaker government in state of emergency has been demolishing many illegal structures. Now they need to start investigating how much these buildings have violated safety codes…We need so much. And we want all of it from this government….

When our garments workers die we scream and shout. Now we know, no one is safe. Our children are not safe. We are burning up in the fire of our own greed. We don’t even keep one extra stairway, because if we sell those extra two square feet we can fill our pockets. We don’t leave a foot of spare road– why should we, occupying land has become our blood lust.

…I was losing all my courage. I was imagining, I would have to watch another Twin Tower collapse scene in front of my eyes. That did not happen. Shupon Roy of ATN Bangla said we forget very easily. We will write a lot for a few days, and then forget everything…
[Translation: nm]

And of course the politics starts! Ex-PM Khaleda Zia says “deep conspiracy”. Many assets damaged owned by BNP aligned people: Falu (NTV, RTV, Amar Desh), Khaleda’s son Tarique (Dandy Dying), and Litu (Bengal Group). First time since State of Emergency that she has been seen in public (besides Ekushey, where I did not see footage of her on TV). Umm hello, this death trap Dhaka city was built by your BNP and Hasina’s AL.


[Photo: ATN/Cell Phone grab]
Breaking news all day as BSEC building went up in flames for seven hours on live TV. Building housed NTV, RTV, AMAR DESH, Dandy Dying, Chittagong Stock Exchange, Bengal Group, etc. The area is a major media hub with ETV, Prothom Alo, Daily Star all in nearby buildings.








Pics: Two from my cell fone, remaining from friends @ EJU Audio & Video