Rana Plaza Collapse (2013): Bangladesh's Garment Factory Disaster

The Rana Plaza collapse was the deadliest disaster in the history of the garment industry. On the morning of 24 April 2013 an eight-storey commercial building in Savar, an industrial town on the outskirts of Dhaka, Bangladesh, fell down while thousands of people were working inside, killing 1,134 and injuring about 2,500. Because the five factories it housed made clothes for well-known Western brands, the disaster forced a global debate about the cost of cheap fashion.

Bangladesh and the garment boom

By 2013 Bangladesh was the world’s second-largest exporter of clothing after China. Ready-made garments earned around 20 billion US dollars a year, roughly four-fifths of the country’s exports, and the industry employed about 4 million people, most of them women who had migrated from the countryside. Low wages, the lowest of any major producer, attracted orders from retailers in Europe and North America.

The industry had grown much faster than regulation. Many factories operated in buildings not designed for heavy machinery, with locked exits and poor wiring. Fires and collapses had already killed hundreds of workers, most recently at the Tazreen Fashions factory near Dhaka, where a fire on 24 November 2012 killed at least 112 people. Trade unions were weak, and labour organisers faced harassment.

The building

Rana Plaza was owned by Sohel Rana, a local businessman with ties to the youth wing of the ruling Awami League. Built in the mid-2000s partly on a filled-in pond, it was meant for shops and offices. Its top floors had been added without proper permission, and the concrete and steel used were later found to be of poor quality.

The lower floors held shops and a bank branch. Five garment factories occupied the upper floors, employing more than 3,000 workers. Heavy generators were placed on the upper levels to keep sewing machines running through Bangladesh’s frequent power cuts, and their vibrations shook the structure every time they started.

Warnings ignored

On 23 April 2013 large cracks appeared in the building. Television crews filmed the damage, and the shops and the bank on the lower floors closed. An engineer who inspected the cracks reportedly advised that the building should be evacuated.

Nevertheless, the owner told reporters the building was safe, and factory managers ordered garment workers to return the next morning. Workers later said they were threatened with the loss of a month’s pay if they stayed away. Most of them entered the building on 24 April.

The collapse and the rescue

At about 8:45 a.m. on 24 April, shortly after a power cut and the starting of the generators, the building collapsed. Within seconds most of the structure pancaked, with floor after floor falling onto the one below, leaving only part of the ground floor standing.

Soldiers, firefighters and thousands of volunteers worked for nearly three weeks to reach survivors, often using hand tools and passing water and food through gaps in the rubble. Some trapped workers had to have limbs amputated to be freed. On 10 May, 17 days after the collapse, a young woman was pulled out alive from the basement area, an event broadcast around the world. The rescue operation was formally ended on 13 May 2013.

Responsibility

Sohel Rana fled but was arrested on 28 April 2013 near Benapole, on the border with India. Several factory owners and engineers were also detained. In 2016 a court charged Rana and dozens of others with murder; the case proceeded very slowly through Bangladesh’s courts. He was separately sentenced in 2017 to three years in prison for failing to declare his wealth.

Attention also turned to the companies buying from Rana Plaza. Labels found in the rubble and company statements linked the factories to brands including Primark, Benetton, Mango, Joe Fresh and The Children’s Place, among others. Campaigners argued that retailers’ demands for low prices and fast turnaround encouraged unsafe practices, while companies pointed out that local authorities were responsible for building approvals.

The Accord and other reforms

Under strong public pressure, clothing companies and unions agreed the Accord on Fire and Building Safety in Bangladesh in May 2013. It was legally binding, covered more than 200 brands, mostly European, and set up independent engineering inspections of about 1,600 factories, with public reports and the right of workers to refuse unsafe work. Several large North American retailers, including Walmart and Gap, formed a separate, non-binding Alliance for Bangladesh Worker Safety in July 2013.

The inspections found more than 100,000 hazards, from missing fire doors to overloaded floors, and thousands of factories carried out repairs. In 2020 the Accord’s work in Bangladesh was handed to a national body, the RMG Sustainability Council, and in 2021 brands and unions agreed an International Accord for Health and Safety in the Textile and Garment Industry, later extended to Pakistan.

The Bangladeshi government amended its labour law in July 2013, making it easier to form unions, and raised the minimum monthly wage for garment workers from 3,000 to 5,300 taka at the end of the year. Compensation was paid through the Rana Plaza Arrangement, chaired by the International Labour Organization, whose trust fund reached its target of about 30 million US dollars in 2015 after brands and others contributed.

Legacy

The disaster is often compared with the 1911 Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire in New York, which led to new workplace safety laws in the United States. Like the Bhopal gas tragedy in India, it raised the question of how far multinational companies are responsible for conditions in the places where their goods are made.

Rana Plaza also inspired consumer campaigns. The Fashion Revolution movement, founded in 2014, marks the anniversary each April by asking shoppers “Who made my clothes?”. Many survivors, however, still live with injuries, trauma and unemployment, and labour groups say that wages and the freedom to organise remain serious concerns in the industry.

Supporters of the reforms point to measurable results: deaths from fires and collapses in Bangladesh’s export garment factories fell sharply in the years after 2013, and the industry kept growing. Critics reply that the inspections covered mainly factories supplying Western brands, leaving many smaller workshops that serve subcontractors or the domestic market outside the system.

Timeline

• 2012, 24 November: A fire at the Tazreen Fashions factory near Dhaka kills at least 112 workers.
• 2013, 23 April: Large cracks appear in Rana Plaza; shops and a bank close, but garment workers are told to return.
• 2013, 24 April, about 8:45 a.m.: The building collapses with more than 3,000 people inside.
• 2013, 28 April: Owner Sohel Rana is arrested near the Indian border.
• 2013, 10 May: A woman is rescued alive after 17 days in the rubble.
• 2013, 13 May: The rescue operation ends; the confirmed death toll eventually reaches 1,134.
• 2013, May: The Accord on Fire and Building Safety in Bangladesh is agreed.
• 2016: Rana and others are charged with murder.
• 2021: The International Accord for Health and Safety in the Textile and Garment Industry is signed.

Why it matters

Rana Plaza showed in the starkest way how the low prices of global fashion could depend on dangerous working conditions far away. It produced one of the most significant safety agreements in the history of the clothing industry and remains a reference point for debates on corporate responsibility, workers’ rights and the economy of Bangladesh, a country that has built much of its growth on garment exports.