I thought it was a bomb!

November 7th 2014 was a normal working day at the Westin Hotel in Dhaka, the crowds were peacefully enjoying their relaxing stay, the phones were ringing at the front desk, children were running around the lobby of the hotel and I was in the back office for our daily meeting before we start our 9 hour duty, we were discussing about important guests that will arrive at the hotel later in the day.

Most of the meeting was in the local language Bangla, as I haven't quite got the hand of Bangla just yet, especially during that time I was just gazing at the walls and occasionally the ceiling feeling a little bored, I was in a daze thinking about usual life outside of my working hours, all for a sudden that was all about to change, a huge explosion echoed through the hotel causing the whole tower to give off a slight wobble, the back office vibrated ever so slightly causing the whole room to go silent, we just stood their and looked at each other with eyes wide open as if we were in a state of shock, the thought that went through my head was 'did we just have a terrorist attack', for the 2 or 3 seconds after the explosion I was waiting to hear gun shots in the hotel lobby, I felt the blood race through my body as I was so unsure what could happen next, Bangladesh was already a country that had a high chance of terrorism and unrest, it was a scary few minutes to experience. We had already gone through hartals and riots outside the hotel before so the chance of an incident happening was still rather high.

We all hastly left the back office, the lobby was quiet with people gazing across to all the hotel staff including me nervously leaving the back office with a bit of a pace, we all spread out through the hotel looking to see if there was any fire anywhere in the hotel, I went up one flight of stairs and looked out of a window.

A huge plum of black smoke was arrising from behind the buildings, deep down I was thankful that the problem wasn't in the hotel I was working in but then my thought went out to wonder what was that huge explosion that was big enough to of caused a building with 29 floors to sway, especially when the explosion was a few blocks away. Guests nervously asked me what was the explosion that caused the hotel to move but I couldn't give them a clear answer because we did not know.

I later found out that the hotel 'Six Seasons' which was a few roads away was the victim of the explosion, luckily the hotel hadn't opened it's doors yet as it was still under development but the blast had still claimed one victim and critically injured two others, some mechanics were attending the AC system on the roof of the building when all for a sudden the chiller exploded causing one of the mechanics to be killed, I was just so surprised how big that explosion was to be able to be heared across nearly the whole of the city, five people were arrested that day including the site manager in connection to the explosion, even though it was bad for the three mechanics, luckily it wasn't a bomb that would of claimed more lives.