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At another 13-storey cafe and restaurant building, the fire-escape door was locked on the ground floor.

There was another exit but that leads straight to a semi-outdoor kitchen fuelled by LPG.

A 12-storey restaurant tower on road-27 stored broken furniture on its main stairway.

BANANI

Correspondents of this newspaper documented violations in four high-rise buildings housing 21 restaurants in these areas.

A 21-storey building on Kamal Ataturk Avenue had only one stairway barely wide enough for two people.

A lift operator at the building said, “In case of a fire, that narrow stairway is the only escape route.”

The building housed at least three restaurants on the first and second floors, while the upper floors were occupied by a private university.

In 2019, Rajdhani Unnayan Kartripakkha marked this building as risky.

Another 13-storey building with five restaurants on road-11 had only one stairway. There were no fire-rated doors to keep the stairs safe.

The stairway was partially blocked by construction materials on the second-floor.

Across the street from this building is another 13-storey building with seven restaurants. But it has no emergency exit or fire-rated doors.

Another seven-storey building in Banani with six restaurants was found to have a single narrow stairway– and even these stairs were used for storing four 45KG LPG gas cylinders.

KHILGAON

The only way out of a five-storey restaurant building at Taltola are two flights of steel rung stairs that lead from the first floor to the ground.

A single stairway in this building leads to this steel structure on the first floor, which could become unusable in case of a fire.

Another seven-storey building with three popular restaurants and a popular electronics store had only one three-foot wide stairway.

A five-storey building with six restaurants and one sweetmeat shop, and a three-storey building with three restaurants also had only one narrow stairway each.

BAILEY ROAD

Of the five buildings with 23 eateries visited by The Daily Star on Bailey Road, three had safety issues.

Right next to the building that caught fire on Thursday was a 14-storey building with restaurants and flats.

The main stairways led to the first floor while the upper floors could only be accessed with elevators.

Towards the back of the building, there was an exit adjacent to the restaurant kitchens.

A person exiting through these stairs would face several gas cylinders kept along the narrow path next to the “exit” gate in the basement.

A few metres ahead, a 10-storey shopping mall and residential building had a fire exit, but it was found locked.

Another nine-storey building with restaurants on the ground floor and shops and offices up to the third floor had no designated fire exit or door.

MIRPUR

On Mirpur-11 correspondents of this newspaper visited at least five restaurants where violations were aplenty.

An eight-storey building with a rooftop had no emergency exits. There were only two lifts and a narrow stairway.

On Mirpur 12, a building with at least 14 restaurants had no fire exit on the first three floors.

In addition, the fire exit stairway was obstructed with construction materials.

Zyma Islam, Abdullah Abbas, Muntakim Saad, Dipan Nandy, Arafat Rahman and Sajjad Hossain contributed to this report.