I heard some of the ladies shouting at lunch time and saw my people drifting out of the factory into the common area outside. This area gives access to the loading ramp and exits to the building. It is shared by four factories on each of the three floors of the building. I went outside and saw that a couple of guys, who turned out to be watchmen from a factory opposite, were pouring water over one of the electrical sub stations. This beast is six feet high and four feet wide. It stands next but one to my factories sub station. To the left of the sub-stations is our ladies toilet. To the right is a ramp winding its way to the third floor (top) of the building. Our electrical sub stations carry huge amounts of power and are very dangerous.
Ahmed (my electrician, handyman, and foreman) was standing by looking concerned but not saying anything to the lads pouring water over the burning apparatus. I told them to stop and then ran for a CO2 fire extinguisher just as the sub station burst into flames. I also shouted at my people, who were gathering around the area, to run. They didn’t take much encouragement to run off in a screaming girlie confusion. But this had no impact on the hundreds of other people who were milling around in the smoke.
When I came back I had the feeling of approaching a ticking bomb. There is an analogy between my old hobby of mountaineering and running a business in Bangladesh. At times you are too high to have a hope of being rescued. If you give in to exhaustion, or to the elements, you are finished. In Bangladesh you often have no option but to get on with it. I pulled the pin from the fire extinguisher and went forward.
Ahmed made a good suggestion that I approach the fire from the ramp which would afford me some cover if the sub station blew up. I waddled up the far side of the ramp towards the fire. Once I was adjacent to the fire I poked the, thankfully long, fire hose over the edge of the ramp and directed it down at the fire. I kept the fire extinguisher running until it emptied and luckily the fire was out at this point. Some of my people had walked back out by this time and I shouted them away Sergeant Bilko style.
The ground floor common area, and the ramp, was by this time full of smoke and fumes from the fire. The area was also teaming with workers from JBQ&Q, on our floor, and workers from the upper floors. I saw a factory owner from one of the upper floors. From his concern, that the sub station effected belonged to his factory. I told him to go up to his factory and collect CO2 extinguishers to use on the fire. I went back to drop off my fire extinguisher at the factory.
When I came back I saw that half a dozen people were emptying DP (dry powder) fire extinguishers into the electrical sub station. The other factory owner was supervising this work and I walked up to him and gave him a smack on the bottom (as only a foreigner can do in Bangladesh) then I shouted at him to go get CO2 extinguishers as I told him. He had no idea which extinguishers were which. He showed me one extinguisher which didn’t even have a label. I didn’t think that DP would fan any embers and the fire was clearly out so I let it pass.
I told the other factory owner to shift some of the on lookers and started to push them out one of the exits. Then I shut the gate and had one man stop people from coming in to satisfy their curiosity. There was always a danger that someone else would try to pour water over the electrical equipment.
The EPZ fire brigade made the 200 yard journey in a startling 15 minutes. I saw one old boy unravelling a fire hose and preparing to douse the entire electrical system for the building in water. His supervisors stopped him. It seems that even in the fire service there is limited understanding of electrical fires.
After another ten minutes BEPZA (the Export Zone) engineers turned up to have a look at the power. They showed me how the fire had started. Someone had dropped a cigarette onto a box carton which had fallen onto one of the sub stations. This was the fire that the security man had sought to put out. If he’d left this cosmetic fire it would have burned out without causing damage to the sub station.
When the crowd started to clear I looked for the retaining pin from my CO2 fire extinguisher. Being Bangladesh someone had already knicked it.
One of the engineers visited me in my factory later and I suggested that he put up a sign around the electrical equipment mentioning the danger of pouring water over an electrical fire. I’ll write to the project engineer for the Chittagong Export Processing Zone and make the suggestion again. I’ll also take the precaution of putting a sign up at each of the posts used by watchmen, since they are the ‘men on the scene’ most quickly in the event of trouble.
The net result of the fire was that we were out of electricity for about an hour. Smoke never entered our studio and no one was injured.
