Massive Fire Devastates Bangladesh’s Korail Slum, 1,500 Homes Destroyed
Catastrophic blaze wipes out lives built on hope in capital’s largest slum.
A ferocious fire that broke out Tuesday evening in the Korail slum—one of Dhaka’s largest and most densely populated informal settlements—completely gutted or severely damaged around 1,500 shanties, displacing several thousand residents and leaving them without shelter, possessions, or immediate prospects as winter approaches the capital.
The inferno raged uncontrollably for a full 16 hours, finally brought under control only on Wednesday afternoon, with towering columns of black smoke visible across the city and casting an apocalyptic pall over the high-rise offices and luxury apartments of adjacent Gulshan and Banani districts, exposing the jarring contrast between Dhaka’s gleaming wealth and its hidden underbelly of extreme deprivation.
Fire service teams encountered insurmountable obstacles reaching the heart of the blaze, as the slum’s chaotic maze of alleys—often narrower than one metre—prevented fire engines from entering, forcing crews to rely on portable pumps and long hoses dragged through muddy lanes while residents formed human chains to pass buckets in a desperate, ultimately futile, bid to save their homes.
Although no lives were lost, the catastrophe has inflicted profound trauma on a community already battered by displacement; official estimates indicate Korail houses approximately 60,000 families, many of them climate refugees driven from coastal and riverine areas by escalating cyclones, salinity intrusion, and riverbank erosion, only to face a new cycle of loss in the very city they fled to for safety.
With Dhaka’s population now surpassing 10.2 million and hundreds of similar slums absorbing continuous waves of rural migrants escaping poverty and climate-induced disasters, Wednesday’s tragedy has amplified longstanding demands for enforceable fire-safety regulations, demolition of illegal structures blocking access routes, provision of relocation land, and comprehensive rehabilitation packages to prevent the capital’s most marginalised citizens from being repeatedly reduced to destitution by preventable calamities.
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