The building, which had no sprinklers, mainly housed manual labourers and it is unclear whether the smoke detectors worked
A fire that likely blocked a crucial exit at a low-cost dormitory-style housing facility in central Seoul killed at least seven people and injured 11 others on Friday.
Officials from the Seoul Metropolitan Fire and Disaster Headquarters said it was possible that the death toll could rise.
The fire probably started near an exit door on the building’s third floor, Kwon Hyeok-min, chief of Seoul’s Jongno District Fire Station, told reporters. The facility’s residents were mostly manual labourers who made their living doing odd jobs, he said.
“It was dawn and the exit door was likely blocked, so it would have been difficult (for the residents) to escape,” Kwon said.
Another official from the Jongno station said the facility, which was built in 1983, did not have sprinklers because current safety regulations cannot be retroactively applied to older structures. The official, who did not want to be named, citing office rules, said it was unclear whether the building’s smoke detector worked.
The facility, called “goshiwon” in Korean, is where poor workers relying on construction jobs or student preparing for bar exams or civil service exams stay in individual rooms with tiny sleep and study spaces.
