MIRYANG (South Korea) • A fire at a hospital and adjoining nursing home killed at least 37 people and injured more than 140 in the South Korean city of Miryang yesterday in the country’s deadliest blaze in a decade..
MIRYANG (South Korea) • A fire at a hospital and adjoining nursing home killed at least 37 people and injured more than 140 in the South Korean city of Miryang yesterday in the country’s deadliest blaze in a decade.
Officials said they were still investigating the cause of the fire which engulfed Sejong Hospital, whose director said the current law did not require the building to have a sprinkler system.
The fire, officials said, erupted in the hospital’s main building. Firefighters and hospital workers evacuated patients from an annexe that operated as a nursing home, carrying some of them on their backs.
Many patients „walked through fire and smoke“ to escape from Sejong Hospital as the main exit was on the first floor, which was ablaze, a city official said. Those on upper floors used ladders and plastic escape slides to flee.
Videos posted on social media showed a patient hanging on to a rope dangling from a helicopter, and another crawling out of a window to climb down a ladder.
„So many lives were sacrificed and the people of our city, as well as those throughout the country, have fallen into deep grief,“ the city’s mayor Park Il Ho told reporters.
