'Where will we go now': The question left amid Korail slum ashes after everything lost in fire
'We started a new household only months ago. That dream has turned to ashes,' lamented another victim Jalal Uddin
"Where will we go now?" murmured Rina, after spending a cold, shivering night in the open, having lost everything in the fire that ravaged the Korail slum last night (25 November).
At daybreak, the full scale of the fire began to emerge. The Boubazar section of the Korail slum in Dhaka looked like a graveyard of homes. Smoke was still rising from the heaps of debris, and the air hung heavy with the smell of burning.
What had once been brick-and-tin, two or three-storey structures now stood twisted and ghostly. Residents who had lost everything in the inferno stared blankly at the ruins.
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Among them was Rina Begum, around 45, who lived near the Beltala club area of the slum. She works as a domestic help and her husband is a security guard. They had a modest household with two sons and a young daughter.
Their rented room was on the third floor of a tin-shed structure. The fire consumed every piece of furniture they owned. Uncertainty clouded Rina's face as she wondered how she would rebuild a home and buy the basics needed for a household. The worry had etched deep lines across her forehead.
That night, the family sought refuge in a nearby mosque. Rina's youngest daughter is eight. Describing how they shivered through the bitterly cold night, Rina struggled to hold back tears. "Where will we go now? How do we start again?" she repeated again and again.
People slept wherever they could, in open spaces, in shops, on mosque floors, enduring a night of misery. Some ate half a meal offered by kind neighbours; many had nothing to eat at all.
As the day wore on, curious crowds gathered. Others arrived to search for scraps of metal in the ruins. If anyone found anything of value among the ashes, they quietly pocketed it.
Another victim, Jalal Uddin, a sanitation worker, said he managed to save only a few pieces of furniture. "Most of it burned. Some things were stolen in the chaos," he added, wiping his eyes.
"We started a new household only months ago. That dream has turned to ashes," he said. With deep frustration, he asked, "Will people like us who live in the slum ever be free from the terror of fire?"
Last night's devastating blaze in Mahakhali's Korail slum was brought under control after five hours of effort by the Fire Service and was completely doused this morning after about 16 hours.
According to early police estimates, at least 1,500 households were destroyed.
