Twenty-one Bangladeshi garment workers were killed February 26 when a sweater factory caught fire. Another 20 workers were hospitalized for burns and other injuries following the blaze at a factory near Dhaka, the manufacturing center of Bangladesh.
As the fire spread, workers on the third and seventh floors were trapped, locked in for their own “security.” Eleven security guards, who had the keys, fled the scene. Poor ventilation, caused partly by storage of production materials on the roof, turned the sealed rooms into gas chambers.