A horrific blaze erupted on Tuesday, October 14, 2025, in Dhaka, Bangladesh, claiming the lives of at least nine workers and leaving eight others injured. The inferno originated in a chemical warehouse situated next to a garment factory, officials confirmed.
Lieutenant Colonel Mohammad Tajul Islam Chowdhury, Director (Operation and Maintenance) at the Fire Service and Civil Defence, reported that nine bodies were recovered from the first and second floors of the garment factory. He told reporters, as quoted by the Bangla daily Prothom Alo, that authorities suspect all victims perished from inhaling toxic gas.
Smoke rises from a building as fire broke out at a garment factory and a chemical warehouse in Dhaka, Bangladesh, on October 14, 2025.
| Photo Credit:
Reuters
The fire was eventually brought under control, and firefighters are continuing their search operations within the factory premises. Talha Bin Jasim, an officer from the Fire Service and Civil Defence Media Wing, indicated that the casualty count might still increase.
Emergency services received the initial report of the fire at 11:40 a.m. local time, with the first response team arriving at 11:56 a.m. Nine firefighting units were deployed to the scene, located in Rupnagar, near the Bangladesh University of Business and Technology (BUBT), successfully extinguishing the flames.
This incident is a grim reminder of Bangladesh’s persistent struggle with industrial safety. The nation has a long and tragic history of industrial disasters, frequently attributed to a lack of proper safety measures and enforcement.
Previous major industrial fires include a 2021 blaze at a food and drink factory that killed at least 52 people. In February 2019, a fire tore through a densely packed 400-year-old area of Old Dhaka, claiming 67 lives. A garment factory fire in Dhaka in 2012 resulted in the deaths of approximately 117 workers who were trapped by locked exits. The country’s deadliest industrial catastrophe was the 2013 Rana Plaza garment factory collapse, which killed over 1,100 people. Another chemical storage fire in Old Dhaka in 2010 left at least 123 dead.