Bangladesh Building-Collapse Toll Tops 600

[Time]

(DHAKA, Bangladesh) — More than 600 bodies have been recovered from the garment-factory building that collapsed well over a week ago, police said Sunday as the grim recovery work continued in one of the worst industrial accidents ever. Police said Sunday evening that the death toll had reached 610. More than 200 bodies have been recovered since Wednesday, when authorities said only 149 people had been listed as missing. The stench of decomposing bodies remains amid the broken concrete of the eight-story Rana Plaza building, and it is anyone's guess how many victims remain to be recovered. The April 24 disaster is likely the worst garment-factory accident ever, and there have been few industrial accidents of any kind with a higher death toll. It surpassed long-ago garment-industry disasters such as New York's Triangle Shirtwaist factory fire, which killed 146 workers in 1911, and more recent tragedies such as a 2012 fire that killed about 260 people in Pakistan and one in Bangladesh that same year that killed 112. (MORE: Why Big Fashion Labels Shouldn't Pull Out of Bangladesh) An architect whose firm designed the building said Sunday that it had not been designed to handle heavy industrial equipment, let alone the three floors that were later illegally added. The equipment used by the five garment factories that occupied Rana Plaza included huge generators that were turned on shortly before the building crumbled. Masood Reza, an architect with Vastukalpa Consultants, said the building was designed in 2004 as a shopping mall and not for any industrial purpose. "We designed the building to have three stories for shops and another two for offices. I don't know how the additional floors were added and how factories were allowed on the top floors," Reza said. "Don't ask me anything else. This is now a sensitive issue," Reza said before hanging up. Government officials say substandard building materials, combined with the vibration of the heavy machines used by the factories, led to the collapse. The building developed cracks a day before the collapse and the owner, Mohammed

Via: TIME GlobalSpin

[Shola Sholaz]

That must be very disastrous. I hate when buildings collapse cos it is always very brutal. May God help them