South Korean hotel fire that killed 7 was likely made worse by the lack of sprinklers, officials say

SEOUL – A fire that killed seven people in a South Korean hotel was possibly made worse by the lack of sprinklers, fire officials said Friday as they investigated the cause of the blaze.

Twelve people were being treated for injuries related to the fire that broke out Thursday evening at the nine-story property in the city of Bucheon, just west of the capital, Seoul.

Officials say the fire didn’t spread broadly after starting in an unoccupied room on the 8th floor. But with the room was unprotected by sprinklers and toxic smoke quickly filled the upper floors. Most of the victims were found in the rooms and hallways of the eighth and ninth floors.

The hotel, which was built in 2003, wasn’t mandated to have a sprinkler system, said Lee Sang-don, an official with the Bucheon Fire Station. While South Korea began requiring sprinklers on all buildings with more than six floors starting in 2017, the requirement wasn’t retroactively applied to most older buildings, except for some medical facilities and nursing homes.

“When we got there, (the floors) were already filled with smoke, which was also pouring out of the windows,” Lee said in a briefing. He said that the fire started in Room 810, which was unoccupied after a guest complained of smelling something burning and requested a room change to the hotel’s management.

Among the seven people killed, five died from inhaling smoke, said Cho Seon-ho, chief of the Gyeonggi provincial fire services, during a briefing to Interior and Safety Minister Lee Sang-min at the scene.

The two others died after leaping from an 8th-floor window while aiming for an inflatable cushion fire fighters had installed on the ground, Cho said. The first person hit the harder edge of the cushion, which also caused it to flip and fatally injure the second person, who jumped shortly after.

A government team of fire officials, forensic experts and police started an on-site inspection Friday to investigate the cause of the blaze. Cho told Lee the fire was likely caused by electrical problems.

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Kim reported from Seoul, South Korea.