Hospital fire kills 41 in SoKor
SEOUL (AP) — A fire spread flames and smoke through a South Korean hospital yesterday morning, killing 41 people, mainly from suffocation, and injuring more than 100 others in one of the country’s deadliest blazes in years.
The dead included three hospital staff and several people in an intensive-care unit for respiratory illnesses.
The fire started in Sejong Hospital’s emergency room and had engulfed the first floor when firefighters arrived. They approached the second floor through the windows to rescue trapped patients, said Choi Man-wu, a fire official in the southeastern city of Miryang.
He said smoke could have spread quickly through the building’s staircase at the center, but the flames were extinguished before reaching the third floor. The cause of the fire wasn’t immediately known. The hospital’s operations were suspended after the fire.
All the dead were from the hospital’s general ward, while all 94 people being cared for in a nursing ward for the elderly were safely evacuated after the fire, some carried on the backs of firefighters, Choi said.
Ten of the injured are in critical condition, local medical official Cheon Jae-kyung said in the same televised briefing, suggesting the toll is feared to increase. Fire officials said 131 were injured, 18 of them in serious condition.
Most of the dead had been hospitalized for respiratory diseases in an intensive-care unit on the second floor. Two doctors and nine nurses were working in the emergency room at the time of fire.
Three of the dead worked at the hospital — a doctor who worked in the emergency room and a nurse and nurse assistant on the second floor, said Son Kyung-cheol, head of the foundation that operates the hospital.