At least 18 schoolgirls die in Thai dormitory fire after they thought classmate’s warning was a prank
Students in the dormitory were drawn mainly from the deprived local hill tribes, who live too far away to travel to school every day
A nighttime fire at a dormitory of a primary school in northern Thailand killed 18 girls, many of whom had been roused by a dorm-mate but went back to sleep, thinking it was a prank, officials and the girl who sounded the alarm said Monday. The victims were between 5 and 12 years old.
Five girls were injured in the Sunday night fire. Many survived by rappelling down from a second-floor window using sheets tied together to form a rope.
The two-storey wooden structure that caught fire housed 38 girls, most of them belonging to the area’s ethnic minorities. Fifteen girls escaped without injuries. The cause of the fire was not immediately known.
Some of the students were still not asleep when the fire broke out and were able to raise the alarm, said Rewat Wassana, manager of the Pithakkaiat Witthaya School, to which the dorm is attached.
The kindergarten and primary school in Wiang Pa Pao district, just outside the city of Chiang Rai, has about 400 day students and boarders. It is about 800 kilometres north of Bangkok.
Rewat said the fire broke out in the dorm’s lower level, which is used for activities. The upper level housed the sleeping quarters. It is one of the two dorms on the school grounds. The other dorm, which is located nearby and is for boys, was untouched, Rewat said.
“We have a teacher who sleeps with the girls in the dorm. She tried to help the students escape,” Rewat told reporters at a news conference broadcast on local television.