Bangladesh shrugs off international help in the Savar rescue operation
It was an unusual move by the home minister of Bangladesh to decline help in the rescue drive at Savar’s Rana Plaza, now a mangled mass of rod and concrete. When disaster strikes, regardless of whether countries are rich or poor, they usually welcome a helping hand from the outside. After major earthquakes like those in Haiti (2010) or China (2013), hundreds of rescuers combined their efforts to save as many lives as possible. Even Japan, in spite of being a rich country, accepted substantial help from around the world following the earthquake and tsunami in 2011.
In a time of acute crisis, following what could be the biggest man made disaster the country has ever encountered, Bangladesh needed help badly, and the international community was willing to help. For example, Britain's Department for International Development had sent a UN aid package for disaster management that included 16 thermal image cameras and 20 search cameras designed to find people trapped in collapsed buildings. However, Home Minister Mohiuddin Khan Alamgir rejected such offers of foreign aid saying that no help was needed because the “rescue operation was going on successfully and the local emergency services were well equipped.”
His statement, however, contradicts what millions of people witnessed. Poorly-equipped volunteers were seen scrambling through the ruins and young doctors were amputating limbs with kitchen knives and saws. The unskilled rescuers even started a fire, apparently by trying to cut through iron rods of the building to make room for saving lives. That fire ended up burning a woman alive who till then had managed to stay alive for over 100 hours. There was also a severe shortage of oxygen cylinders and medicine supplies. All this begs the question: why Bangladesh discarded state-of-the-art search equipment which could have saved so many lives?
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