13 killed, 50 hurt as fire spreads to hotel
By Li Qian |
April 15, 2013, Monday
|
Print Edition
Print Edition
AT least 13 people have been confirmed dead while another 50 are being treated for their injuries after a fire early yesterday morning in a hotel in Xiangyang in central China's Hubei Province, local government officials said.
The fire is believed to have started at around 6am in an Internet cafe in the city's Fancheng District and then spread to hotel rooms on the upper floors of the building.
Firefighters were called and had extinguished the blaze by about 8:50am, according to Xinhua news agency.
An employee said that 42 of the hotel's 50 rooms were occupied at the time. He said some guests were saved by firefighters while other managed to escape by themselves.
Online video footage showed seven or eight people standing on the ledge outside the window of a room on the second floor, waiting to be rescued.
At another window, a man and a woman also waited to be rescued, the man covering his mouth with a cloth.
Another man was seen holding onto the windowsill of a room on the fourth floor and trying to lower himself onto the windowsill of the room below while heavy smog engulfed his room.
White ropes, which looked like they had been made by tieing sheets and curtains together, were seen hanging from a second-floor room.
Guests in that room were believed to have successfully reached the ground.
A local resident in his 60s helped to save five people, and a man and a woman jumped from the fourth floor, suffering arm and leg fractures, according to local media reports.
According to a China News Service report, more than 10 stores on the first floor of the building had been destroyed in the blaze.
The cause of the fire is still under investigation.
The fire is believed to have started at around 6am in an Internet cafe in the city's Fancheng District and then spread to hotel rooms on the upper floors of the building.
Firefighters were called and had extinguished the blaze by about 8:50am, according to Xinhua news agency.
An employee said that 42 of the hotel's 50 rooms were occupied at the time. He said some guests were saved by firefighters while other managed to escape by themselves.
Online video footage showed seven or eight people standing on the ledge outside the window of a room on the second floor, waiting to be rescued.
At another window, a man and a woman also waited to be rescued, the man covering his mouth with a cloth.
Another man was seen holding onto the windowsill of a room on the fourth floor and trying to lower himself onto the windowsill of the room below while heavy smog engulfed his room.
White ropes, which looked like they had been made by tieing sheets and curtains together, were seen hanging from a second-floor room.
Guests in that room were believed to have successfully reached the ground.
A local resident in his 60s helped to save five people, and a man and a woman jumped from the fourth floor, suffering arm and leg fractures, according to local media reports.
According to a China News Service report, more than 10 stores on the first floor of the building had been destroyed in the blaze.
The cause of the fire is still under investigation.
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