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The Rana Plaza collapse (also referred to as the Savar building collapse) occurred on 24 April 2013 in Savar Upazila, near Dhaka, Bangladesh, when the nine-story Rana Plaza commercial building collapsed due to a structural failure.

It is considered to be one of the deadliest structural failures in modern human history, as well as the deadliest garment-factory disaster in history, and is the deadliest industrial accident in the history of Bangladesh. The building housed five garment factories, a bank, and apartments. On 23 April 2013, large cracks were discovered in the building. The shops and the bank on the lower floors immediately closed, but the garment factory owners on the upper floors ignored the warnings and the workers returned to work the following day. On 24 April, the building collapsed at 9:00 am local time, trapping thousands of people inside. The court in Bangladesh formally charged 38 people with murder, along with the building owner Sohel Rana. The collapse of Rana Plaza was a major turning point for the global fashion industry.

Rana Plaza was built in 2006 and owned by Sohel Rana—allegedly a member of the local unit of Jubo League (the youth wing of Bangladesh Awami League, the political party in power). On 23 April 2013 (one day before the collapse), a TV channel reported on and showed footage of cracks in the Rana Plaza building.

One manager of the factories in the Rana Plaza reported that Sohel Rana told them that the building was safe.

The day after the Rana Plaza building collapsed, the Rajdhani Unnayan Kartripakkha (Capital Development Authority) filed a case against the owners of the building and the five garment factories operating inside it. Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina had said in Parliament that the name "Sohel Rana" was not in the Jubo League office bearers list; she then ordered the arrest of Sohel Rana and four of the owners of the garment factories operating in the building. Four days after the building collapsed, the owner of the Rana Plaza, Sohel Rana, was arrested at Benapole, Jessore District, on the Indo-Bangladeshi border, by security forces. On 1 May, during International Workers' Day, thousands of protesting workers paraded through central Dhaka to demand safer working conditions and the death penalty for the owner of Rana Plaza. On 30 August, 100 days after the collapse of Rana Plaza, injured workers and family members of those who died there along with workers rights activists inaugurated a memorial for the tragedy, a statue of two fists thrusting towards the sky grasping a hammer and sickle. In March 2014 Rana Plaza owner Sohel Rana was granted six months' bail in the High Court, but he was not released because of additional pending charges. On 14 June 2016 Sohel Rana and 17 others were indicted for violating building code in the construction of Rana Plaza.

The Accord on Fire and Building Safety in Bangladesh, commonly referred to as the Bangladesh Accord, was established in 2013 in response to the Rana Plaza disaster.

By March 2014, seven of the 28 international brands sourcing products from Rana Plaza had contributed to the Rana Plaza Donor's Trust Fund compensation fund, which was backed by the International Labour Organization.

On 15 June 2014, the Bangladesh Anti Corruption Commission filed a case against 14 people for building Rana Plaza with faulty design.

Prior to its collapse in 2013, the eight-story commercial building known as Rana Plaza in Savar, Bangladesh, housed multiple garment factories, including New Wave Bottoms, Phantom, and Ether Tex; these manufacturers operated within the complex and produced clothing for a range of domestic and international brands and retailers.

A year after Rana Plaza: What hasn't changed since the Bangladesh factory collapse, The Washington Post, 18 April 2014

Quick Facts

• The collapse of Rana Plaza was a major turning point for the global fashion industry.
• By March 2014, seven of the 28 international brands sourcing products from Rana Plaza had contributed to the Rana Plaza Donor's Trust Fund compensation fund, which was backed by the International Labour Organization.
• The court in Bangladesh formally charged 38 people with murder, along with the building owner Sohel Rana.
• One manager of the factories in the Rana Plaza reported that Sohel Rana told them that the building was safe.
• The Accord on Fire and Building Safety in Bangladesh, commonly referred to as the Bangladesh Accord, was established in 2013 in response to the Rana Plaza disaster.

Source material: Wikipedia - "Rana Plaza collapse". Adapted and summarized for DiscoverScroll. Original contributors are credited through the linked Wikipedia article. Read original on Wikipedia. CC BY-SA 4.0. Changes were made from the original.