Bangladesh building-collapse toll tops 600 (link added) updated now 640

[Omaha Steve]

Last edited Mon May 6, 2013, 06:46 AM - Edit history (3)

Source: AP-Excite

By FARID HOSSAIN

DHAKA, Bangladesh (AP) - 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.

An architect whose firm designed the building said Sunday that it had never 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.

FULL story at link.

Updated info in reply below.





Read more: http://apnews.excite.com/article/20130505/DA638NU02.html

---

I am so sorry the link was not included in the OP by accident. OS



A woman grieves for her late relative after his body was pulled from the rubble in the collapsed garment factory building and brought to the morgue, in Savar, near Dhaka, Bangladesh, Saturday, May 4, 2013. In the aftermath of a building collapse that killed more than 530 people, Bangladesh's garment manufacturers may face a choice of reform or perish. (AP Photo/Wong Maye-E)

[onehandle]

1. A rightist dream facility for 'mercian workers. nt

[Quantess]

2. I wonder if the number will climb even higher? (no text)

[Omaha Steve]

3. Bangladesh building collapse toll tops 640

http://apnews.excite.com/article/20130506/DA63NL500.html

By JULHAS ALAM

DHAKA, Bangladesh (AP) - Bangladeshi police are investigating possible murder charges against the owner of a shoddily built factory that collapsed nearly two weeks ago after the wife of a garment worker crushed in the accident filed a complaint.

The legal development comes as officials said Monday that the death toll from the country's worst industrial disaster had reached 645.

Sheuli Akter, the wife of Jahangir Alam, filed the complaint with Dhaka magistrate Wasim Sheikh, saying her husband and other workers were "pushed toward death" by building owner Mohammed Sohel Rana and two others.

Alam was employed in New Wave Styles Ltd., one of the five garment factories housed in the eight-story Rana Plaza that collapsed April 24 as workers started their morning shift even though cracks had developed in the building.

FULL update at link.