7 killed, 12 injured in hotel fire in Bucheon
A hotel is on fire in Bucheon, Gyeonggi Province, Thursday. Courtesy of Bucheon Fire Station
Seven people were killed and a dozen others injured following a fire at a hotel in Bucheon, just west of Seoul, on Thursday, firefighting authorities said.
The fire began in a room on the eighth floor of the nine-story hotel at 7:39 p.m., leaving seven people dead, including guests, according to authorities.
The injured are undergoing treatment at local hospitals. Three of them are seriously injured, but they are not in critical condition.
Firefighters enter a hotel in Bucheon, Gyeonggi Province, after a deadly fire broke out, Aug. 22. Yonhap
Some people died after jumping out the windows and onto an inflatable mattress, while one woman was found in cardiac arrest on the hotel stairs and was later pronounced dead at a hospital.
"Some of the dead were found on the stairs and in the hallways of the hotel," a Bucheon public health official told reporters.
Firefighters put out most of the fire at 10:14 p.m. The blaze did not spread inside the building but produced smoke that caused a large number of casualties, according to the authorities. The hotel has 64 guestrooms and is estimated to have had 27 guests in the building when the fire broke out.
Firefighting authorities dispatched about 70 vehicles and about 160 firefighters to the scene.
"Rescue work is continuing in the hotel rooms," a police official said. "Only after completely putting out the fire and searching the interior will we be able to determine the exact scale of the casualties."
Interior Minister Lee Sang-min called for all-out efforts by firefighting authorities and the local government to extinguish the fire and rescue people using all available personnel and equipment. (Yonhap)