Taiwan building fire kills at least 46
Print Edition
AN overnight fire tore through a building in southern Taiwan’s Kaohsiung City yesterday, killing 46 people and injuring dozens of others in the island’s deadliest blaze in decades.
The fire broke out in the 13-story, mixed-use building in the small hours early yesterday, according to officials, raging through multiple floors before firefighters finally got it under control.
Pictures published by Taiwan media showed smoke billowing out of the building’s windows as firefighters desperately tried to douse the flames using extendable hoses.
Kaohsiung’s fire department said it sent more than 70 trucks to tackle the blaze, which took four hours to put out.
As daylight broke, the sheer scale of the fire became clear, with every floor of the building visibly blackened and most of its windows shattered.
The fire department said the blaze “caused 41 injuries and 46 deaths,” with officials adding that most of the fatalities occurred on floors seven to 11, which housed residential apartments.
Many of the residents of the 40-year-old building were elderly and lived alone in apartments as small as 13 square meters, local media said. The building had 120 residential units on the upper floors, as well as a closed movie theater, abandoned restaurants and karaoke clubs below them, local media said.
Fire extinguishers had been installed last month, but only three per floor because the residents could not afford to pay more, the United Daily News newspaper reported.
The fire appeared to have started on the ground floor. The United Daily News said that investigators were focusing on a first-floor tea shop whose owner reportedly fought with his girlfriend earlier on Wednesday. They had not ruled out arson, the newspaper said.
Residents reported hearing a number of loud noises when the fire first broke out on the lower floors. “I heard many loud bangs — bang, bang, bang — on the ground floor and came down to investigate,” an unidentified man who lived in the building told Formosa TV.
“That’s when I realized there was a fire and called the police,” he added.
An unnamed female survivor, describing the scene on her floor, said: “When I opened the door to get out, the hallway was full of black smoke.”
As night fell, police announced emergency services had finished searching the building with no further casualties found.
Chinese mainland authorities have expressed deep condolences over the fatalities and offered sincere sympathies to the injured compatriots and family members affected.
The fire looks set to be Taiwan’s deadliest in years. The last fire of a similar magnitude was in 1995, when 64 people perished inside a packed karaoke club.
As an island frequently battered by earthquakes and typhoons, Taiwan has strict building codes and a generally good safety record. But there is often a gap between what the rules state and how safety standards are applied, especially in older buildings.
Some of the highest death tolls in recent earthquakes have come when older buildings have collapsed, with subsequent investigations showing their designs were not up to code.
Earlier this year 49 people were killed when a train hit a truck that had slid onto the tracks.
- About Us
- |
- Terms of Use
- |
-
RSS - |
- Privacy Policy
- |
- Contact Us
- |
- Shanghai Call Center: 962288
- |
- Tip-off hotline: 52920043
- 沪ICP证：沪ICP备05050403号-1
- |
- 互联网新闻信息服务许可证：31120180004
- |
- 网络视听许可证：0909346
- |
- 广播电视节目制作许可证：沪字第354号
- |
- 增值电信业务经营许可证：沪B2-20120012
Copyright © 1999- Shanghai Daily. All rights reserved.Preferably viewed with Internet Explorer 8 or newer browsers.
