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SKOREA-FIRE-HOSPITAL
31 dead in South Korea hospital blaze: Yonhap
SEOUL, Jan 26, 2018 (BSS/AFP) – At least 31 people were killed in a blaze
at a hospital in South Korea on Friday, Yonhap news agency said, with dozens
more injured.
Video footage and pictures showed a helicopter flying above the building in
Miryang, engulfed by heavy grey smoke and surrounded by multiple fire trucks.
The five-storey structure housed a nursing home as well as the hospital,
and the South’s Yonhap news agency said 31 people had been killed, citing
firefighters at the site.
Earlier the national fire agency put the toll at 19.
“Two nurses said they had seen fire suddenly erupting in the emergency
room,” said fire chief Choi Man-Woo, but the cause of the blaze was not
immediately known.
All the patients had been evacuated, he added.
“The victims came both from the hospital and the nursing home. Some died on
their way to another hospital.”
Pictures showed survivors being brought out wrapped in blankets, and
firefighters picking their way through the blackened shell of the building
after the blaze was extinguished.
Around 200 people were in the Sejong Hospital building when the fire broke
out, police said.
The fire came only a month after 29 people were killed in an inferno at a
fitness club in the South Korean city of Jecheon — a disaster blamed on
insufficient emergency exits, flammable finishing materials and illegally
parked cars blocking access to emergency vehicles.
BSS/AFP/RY/0810 hrs