Fire engulfs Japanese aged care home, leaving 11 people dead
After dawn, police and firefighters were combing the black remains of furniture in freezing temperatures
Eleven people died in a fire on Wednesday night at a lodging facility in Sapporo that housed impoverished elderly and disabled people, with only five residents surviving, police said.
The lodging in the northern prefecture of Hokkaido, which provided low-cost shelter for welfare recipients, was totally gutted. Japan has about 1,700 such facilities, often used by elderly people unable to enter care facilities or rejected by flat owners.
A total of 16 residents aged between 40 and 90 were living in the decrepit three-story wooden home built on a 400-square-meter lot about 1.5km north of Sapporo railway station.
The blaze started at about 11.40pm on Wednesday and firefighters battled the flames until about noon on Thursday when it was finally brought under control.
Eight men and three women died in the fire, and three others were injured. Police are still trying to identify the victims, many of whom were believed to be elderly.
Noriyoshi Fujimoto, the head of the company that rented out the nearly 50-year-old building and operated the facility, said: “We thought we could deal with the blaze with fire extinguishers.”