‘Extremely fierce’ fire kills 46 people and injures dozens in southern Taiwan
- Blaze ripped through 13-storey mixed-use building in Kaohsiung in the early hours of Thursday
- Authorities are still investigating the cause; witnesses said they heard a loud bang before it broke out
Another 41 people were injured in the blaze at the 13-storey mixed-use block, according to Kaohsiung fire bureau officials. They said 32 bodies had been sent straight to the morgue. Fourteen people who showed no signs of life were among those taken to hospital and later declared dead.
The fire bureau was notified of the blaze just before 3am and sent 42 units to the building in the city’s Yancheng district, according to its case status system.
It was put out at around 7am, and local police said they were still investigating the cause of the blaze. They said some witnesses had heard a loud bang before the fire broke out.
The blaze was “extremely fierce” and destroyed many floors of the Cheng Chung Cheng building, according to a statement from the fire department.
Footage posted online by local newspaper United Daily News showed thick smoke billowing from the building as firefighters on aerial ladders tried to contain the flames.
Survivors were taken out of the building on stretchers, with some, including the elderly, wearing oxygen masks.
The search and rescue effort continued into the afternoon. Fire bureau chief Lee Ching-hsiu told reporters: “We have teams searching for people on the seventh to 11th floors, especially residents who have stayed or have been locked inside their units. In those cases we will break down doors and search inside.”
After an initial investigation, the fire bureau said the blaze appeared to have started on the ground floor, where a number of shops were located. Damaged refrigerators, washing machines and air conditioners were strewn on the pavement outside a second-hand appliance store.
The lower levels of the building were completely blackened. Local media reports said flats on the upper floors were mainly occupied by underprivileged people. Firefighters were still at the scene in the late afternoon, some of them checking inside the building with flashlights.
Construction workers burnt joss paper nearby for the dead, a traditional ritual, before putting up scaffolding to reinforce the building and removing signs and other dangerous objects.
One woman on the street outside the building told Formosa TV she had been waiting 11 hours for news of her elderly parents. “They haven’t come out. I’ve called them on the phone but they aren’t picking up,” she said. “They’re in their 60s and 70s and can’t walk well.”
The dilapidated building was granted its use permit 40 years ago, in 1981. Charles Lin Chin-rong, Kaohsiung’s deputy mayor, said that was before an apartment management law came in and the building had not been refurbished or redeveloped because it did not have a management committee.
He said it had been subject to fire department inspections since 2019, with the latest conducted just on Monday.
“But unfortunately, we inspected the building in accordance with the law and put up notices,” Lin said, without saying what the notices were for. “But this incident still happened.”
Mayor Chen Chi-mai and his cabinet bowed twice in apology at an evening press conference, saying the city government would reflect on the fire and improve regulation of old buildings.
“There would be quite a few old buildings like Cheng Chung Cheng in Yancheng and other districts of Kaohsiung that were built before current fire regulations came in and are run-down, have complicated usage and underprivileged tenants,” he said.
Beijing’s Taiwan Affairs Office and the semi-official Association for Relations Across the Taiwan Straits issued a statement expressing “deep condolences to compatriots who passed away and candid sympathies to injured compatriots and their relatives”.
Additional reporting by Associated Press
