Secretariat fire: Probe report submission delayed by a day to test more samples
The report will be submitted to the CA tomorrow, said the probe committee chief
The committee investigating the recent fire at the Bangladesh Secretariat sought one more day to submit its report to the chief adviser as it plans to test more samples tonight (30 December).
The initial probe report will be submitted to Chief Adviser Muhammad Yunus tomorrow (31 December), chief of the probe committee Senior Home Affairs Secretary Nasimul Gani said at a press briefing today after a meeting at the secretariat.
The CA's Deputy Press Secretary yesterday said the initial probe report would be submitted today.
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"The preliminary investigation report of the fire incident will be submitted to the chief adviser tomorrow. Some samples will be sent abroad for testing," Gani said, without providing any details regarding the samples.
Stating that a high-level committee has been formed to probe the fire incident, Gani said many teams are working on this, including the army, Buet, PWUT, police and ICT officials.
"We are all working as a team. We are collecting evidence and discussing to reach a conclusion about what can be said initially," he said.
The probe committee chief also said they have already tested some of the samples in the lab.
"We have collected some new samples today. Those are also being tested. We were given till 30 December to submit the report. But we asked for one more day as we will do some tests tonight," he said.
Gani said he hopes to submit the report by 5:00pm tomorrow.
He also said some of the collected evidence samples will be sent abroad for testing.
Earlier on the day, Public Works Department (PWD) Deputy Assistant Engineer Abdul Mannan Bhuiyan said the 26 December fire damaged at least 200 rooms across the four floors of the secretariat's building-7.
"There are 40 to 50 rooms on each of the floors which suffered the most damage. Some are completely damaged while some are partially damaged," he said while talking to reporters at the secretariat premises this afternoon.
In the early hours of 26 December, the fire broke out on four floors – six, seven, eight, and nine – of building 7 at 1:52am. Firefighters managed to fully douse the flames after nearly 10 hours.
While no casualties were reported from the fire itself, Shoyanur Jaman Noyon, a firefighter from Tejgaon fire station, was killed in the line of duty.
