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A grim battle

Arun Devnath
Every time firemen blew their whistles, it elicited gasps and shocked murmurs from onlookers. It was an ominous sign that a body was about to arrive. Quickly, people stepped aside — to clear the way for a group of rescuers to pass by with the body in white shrouds.
Hours into the building blaze on Nawab Katra Road, the rescuers kept hauling body after body from the burnt-out site. The bodies were laid out one after another on a long stretch of the old Dhaka road.
For the relatives of the dead, it was the most heart-wrenching scene.
Md Akbar, standing against a roadside wall, broke down in tears. He was too distraught to talk to the media. Another man was trying to comfort him. Akbar lost his sister to the overnight building blaze, said the man, before leading him away.
Like Akbar, many others were in search of an answer to why so many people died in one incident and why so quickly.
Some blamed it on the fire fighters, who took so long to arrive on the scene. Some just blamed it on their fate.
"Why did it happen, Allah? And why me?" murmured a middle-aged man, his eyes cast on the road.
Farther down, police and Rab officials were busy maintaining discipline. One of the officials was visibly in tears. A tired-looking security man stood nearby, leaning against the wall.
On the other side of the road was a grim line of the bodies — the victims of the blaze — some wrapped in white shrouds, some in bed sheets and kantha. Some children were kept in paper boxes.
Some were in a desperate bid to identify their loved ones — among the dead.
The air was filled with complaints and accusations against the officials of Bangladesh Fire Service and Civil Defence. Local residents said they came late to the scene. One of the angry men, Harun-ur-Rashid Azam, alleged that the firemen were not prompt enough to rescue the trapped people. Azam rudely interrupted a top official when he was speaking to a TV station.
"Get out of here,” Azam said to the Fire Service official.
Azam who identified himself as a businessman tried to defend himself saying the fire service headquarters was not far way from the scene.
Old Dhaka residents said it was the local people who first launched the rescue operation. The arrival of fire-fighters only added speed to the rescue drive.
For the rescuers, it was an uphill battle in the dark. The whole area plunged into a power blackout after transformers burst — the apparent trigger in the blaze.
On the road, fire-fighters put up searchlights, the only source of light in gathering darkness in the area.
As the night wore on, the rescuers pressed ahead with their task. And the bodies kept piling up.