Blaze at hospital kills 37 and injures 140

A fire raced through a small South Korean hospital with no sprinkler system yesterday, killing 37 people, many of them elderly, and injuring more than 140 others in the country’s deadliest blaze in about a decade.

Sejong Hospital in the south-eastern city of Miryang has a separate nursing ward where 94 elderly patients were being treated, but all of them were safely evacuated, fire officials said.

Most of the victims were on the first and second floors of the hospital’s six-storey general ward, where its emergency room and intensive care unit were located. Officials believe the fire started in the emergency room. The blaze was extinguished in about three hours.

Police and forensic investigators examined the scene afterwards.

Mirayng police official Kim Han-su said 26 of those who died were in their 80s or older. He added that police may be able to announce the cause of the fire today.