On this day, 24 April 2013, the 8-storey Rana Plaza building in Bangladesh collapsed, killing over 1,100 mostly women garment workers, as bosses in the country’s largest industry put profits before people. The first people on the scene to render assistance were local workers and relatives of those trapped, who began desperately trying to rescue survivors before emergency service workers arrived.
The building had been evacuated the previous day after cracks appeared in walls, floors and pillars, but the owner of the building, Sohel Rana, claimed that an engineer declared the structure safe and workers should go back to work the following day.
At 9 AM, one hour after the morning shift began work, a quality inspector named Mahmudur described to the Daily Star what happened next: “Darkness engulfed the entire place with thick clouds of debris. I heard screams around me. My heart started pounding… I lay down near a pillar, thinking that perhaps I was going to die. We were being roasted inside”.
Rana, who was an official in the ruling Awami League party, had the building constructed without any supervision from engineers or architects in 2008, and in 2010 added three more floors of the building without planning permission. At the time of the disaster he was planning on adding an additional ninth storey.
On April 25, the day after the collapse, hundreds of thousands of workers in the area walked out on strike, built barricades on major highways, attacked working factories and battled police before besieging the headquarters of the garment employers’ federation, demanding prosecution of Rana and the factory bosses.
More information, sources and map: https://stories.workingclasshistory.com/article/9625/Rana-Plaza-collapse https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=614209984085554&set=a.602588028581083&type=3
