Video: 'Bangladesh Factory Collapse'

(Wednesday, April 24, 2013, 8:45 a.m. Bangladesh Standard Time; during the 2013 Rana Plaza factory collapse) — 1,134 people were killed today when a shoddily constructed eight-story commercial building housing garment factories making clothing for European and American consumers collapsed into a deadly heap in Bangladesh.

Soldiers, paramilitary police officers, firefighters, and other citizens clawed through the wreckage, searching for survivors and bodies in the rubble of Rana Plaza, a building in Savar, an industrial suburb of Dhaka, the capital.

The search for the dead ended on May 13 with a death toll of 1,134. Approximately 2,500 injured people were rescued from the building.

The Bangladesh Garment Manufacturers and Exporters Association president confirmed that 3,122 workers were in the building at the time of the collapse.

Video: 'Rana Plaza Collapse Documentary: The Deadly Cost of Fashion | Op-Docs | The New York Times'

It is considered the deadliest accidental structural failure in modern human history, the deadliest garment-factory disaster in history, and the deadliest industrial accident in the history of Bangladesh.

The building contained clothing factories, a bank, apartments, and several shops. The shops and the bank on the lower floors were immediately closed after cracks were discovered in the building.

The building’s owners ignored warnings to avoid using the building after cracks had appeared the day before.

Garment workers were ordered to return the following day and the building collapsed during the morning rush hour.