Yasir Monon, Dhaka: The fire began just after sunset. Flames reached for the sky over the Karail slum. This was not the first time. But on November 25, 2025, the fire was different. It was worse than any before. In just a few hours, nearly fifteen hundred homes turned to ash. Thousands of people lost everything they owned. They lost the only shelter they had.

Nineteen fire service units rushed to the scene. Their fight lasted over five hours. They struggled with narrow lanes. They faced a critical lack of water. The tiny alleys were too small for their large trucks. Water pumps failed. Traffic jams stole precious time. No lives were lost, or casualties reported officially that night. This was the only good news. But for the survivors, staying alive became the hardest challenge.

This tragedy repeats itself. In the last twenty-five years, this community has seen at least twenty major fires. The cycle is always the same. A fire starts. Homes burn to the ground. People rebuild with bamboo and tin. Then they wait for the next fire. Why does this keep happening? Why does this community sit on a powder keg in the heart of the capital?

The story of Karail began in the 1970s. The area was created by filling parts of the Gulshan lake with trash and soil. The people who came here were not looking for fun. They were villagers who lost everything. River erosion, cyclones, and floods forced them to the city. Dhaka gave them work. But it did not give them a decent place to live.

A garment worker earns five to eight thousand taka a month. This money is barely enough for food. Renting a proper building is an impossible dream. So, about eighty thousand people live crammed into just ninety acres of land. That is nearly nine hundred people per acre. This density is higher than almost any other place in the world.

The houses are packed tightly together. The lanes between them are less than a meter wide. In this tinderbox environment, a single spark can jump to fifty homes in just minutes.

Starting a fire here does not take a major accident. Daily life is full of risk. Most electrical connections are illegal. Wires are hooked from main lines. They dangle, wrapped in plastic bags. A gust of wind or a short circuit can send sparks flying. Low-quality gas cylinders from the black market are common. They often leak.

At night, many use kerosene lamps or candles. A child playing or turning in sleep can knock them over. To fight mosquitoes, almost every home uses coils all night. These can easily ignite bedding or bamboo walls. A carelessly thrown cigarette can start a blaze on a pile of dry paper.

The biggest problem is the lack of space between homes. Fire jumps from one hut to the next without any barrier. When fire breaks out, the fire service is helpless. Their heavy trucks get stuck on the main road. They can try to drag hoses fifty or a hundred meters inside. But by then, hundreds of homes are already gone.

The history of the last decade paints a grim picture. In March 2016, an evening fire turned dozens of homes to ash. Nine fire units brought it under control in an hour. Later that December, a bigger disaster struck. A fire from a gas stove or electrical fault burned over five hundred homes. With no water source nearby, the fire service had to pump from the lake. This caused critical delays.

In March 2017, fire struck again at two in the morning. Hundreds of homes were destroyed. Many were hurt by burns or smoke. In March 2018, another morning fire consumed over five hundred homes. Aid groups provided plastic sheets and some food. It was only a temporary fix.

A heartbreaking event occurred in August 2019, just before Eid. While people prepared for the festival, a fire burned twelve hundred homes. Three thousand people were left homeless. They lost their festival savings, new clothes, and all their belongings.

The pattern did not stop. In February 2023, fire broke out three times in a single month. One fire destroyed one hundred fifty makeshift homes and seventeen semi-pucca houses. Fires happened again in February and December of 2024. The December fire was a major blow for climate refugees. They had come to Dhaka to escape coastal floods, only to face fire. The most recent fire on November 25, 2025, was the most devastating of all.

The real cost of these fires is more than numbers. It is a deep human crisis. A garment worker makes about sixty-five hundred taka a month with overtime. After a fire, rebuilding a tin roof costs twenty-five thousand taka. A bamboo fence costs another fifteen thousand. Furniture, kitchen pots, clothes, and school books add up. Starting over can cost sixty thousand taka. This is almost ten months of a worker’s full salary.

Most people do not have that kind of savings. They are forced to take loans from local moneylenders. The interest is crushing. They borrow at ten percent interest per month. A single fire shackles a family with debt for years. If fire strikes twice, a family may never recover.

Children suffer the most. Their books and school uniforms burn. Parents cannot afford to replace them or pay school fees. Children drop out of school. Girls are married off early to reduce family costs. Boys as young as twelve start driving rickshaws or doing other work.

The health impact is severe. Fire smoke damages lungs. Living under the open sky raises the risk of pneumonia in children. The extreme stress leads to heart attacks and strokes. In 2018, a woman lost her husband to a heart attack. It happened three weeks after their home burned for the second time. The doctor said extreme worry was the cause.

Stopping this cycle of fire is not impossible. Other countries and some slums in Dhaka have shown that smart plans can reduce disasters. Experts suggest a few effective steps.

First, the main lanes need to be wider. If roads are widened to three meters every fifty meters, fire trucks could get in. What takes hours now could take only minutes.

Second, water must be available. Installing a five-thousand-liter community water tank every hundred meters would help. Locals could start fighting a fire immediately.

Third, illegal power connections must be replaced with legal meters. A pilot project in Mirpur slum in 2022 proved this. Legal connections reduced fires by eighty percent. This model is urgently needed in Karail.

Fourth, community firefighting teams should be created. Training twenty volunteers per block is key. Giving them fire extinguishers and buckets would help. They could put out small fires before they grow.

Fifth, using fire-retardant paint on bamboo walls can slow down flames. One coat of paint can buy fifteen extra minutes. That is enough time to save lives and property.

Sixth, the use of mosquito coils must be controlled. A community patrol could ban their use inside homes after 10 PM. This would prevent many accidents.

The total cost for all these measures in Karail is around two crore taka. That is about 1.8 million dollars. This is less than the price of a medium-sized building in Gulshan. But the question remains. Who will take this initiative?

We cannot just wait for the government to act. Change is possible if people from all parts of society step up. Those living in Dhaka can donate to NGOs. They can fund fire extinguishers or water tanks for the slum. People can pressure local ward councilors. They must answer why these people still lack legal electricity and water after fifty years.

Families who employ domestic workers or drivers from Karail can help. They could add a small amount to their salary. This could build an emergency fund for them in crisis.

Those abroad can choose to buy from clothing brands that care about worker safety. International pressure can sometimes force factory owners to improve living conditions.

The residents of Karail also have a role. Small daily precautions can prevent big disasters. They must turn off gas valves completely after cooking. They should not sleep with phones charging. Keeping water and sand nearby is wise. Neighbors should have a plan for what to do if a fire starts.

There is an uncomfortable truth behind these fires. The Karail slum sits on incredibly valuable land. This ninety-acre plot between Gulshan and Banani is worth billions. It is natural to wonder if developers and powerful groups have a greedy eye on this land.

After every major fire, the area is cleared. Government officials talk about resettlement. New plans are announced. But in reality, shops often appear on the land. Sometimes it becomes a parking lot. The fire victims are forced to move further back or onto the streets. The same pattern has been seen in other slums like Agargaon and Mohakhali. The flames seem to be an unofficial tool for eviction. As long as these people have no legal rights to the land, these “accidents” will likely continue.

If no effective action is taken, the next fire is easy to predict. It might start on a deep night from a short circuit or a mosquito coil. With the wind, three hundred homes will burn in ten minutes. The fire service will arrive twenty-five minutes later. They might stop the fire from spreading further. But everything in the middle will already be ash.

The next morning, we will see pictures of the burned homes on Facebook. We will mourn for a little while. But by the end of the day, we will forget. The people of Karail will clear the ash again. They will plant new bamboo poles. Their lives will continue this game of hide and seek with fire.

But it does not have to be this way. The people who keep this city running deserve safety. They drive the rickshaws. They sew our clothes. They clean our homes. Ensuring their safety is our duty too. The people of Karail have waited for fifty years. How many more times must they burn for their lives to matter to us? The fire of November 25, 2025, may be out. But the questions it left behind are still burning. Will we find the answers before the next fire starts?