Nursing home fire kills dozen
Source: Agencies |
October 24, 2012, Wednesday
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Print Edition
Print Edition
Police in Taiwan said a nursing home resident confessed to an early morning fire that ripped through the facility yesterday, killing 12 people and injuring 60, many of them too weak to get out of their beds to escape.
Police did not identify the suspect, but Taiwan television stations reported that he set the 3am fire because he was unhappy about his own protracted illness. The reports also said the man was found naked, hiding in a storage facility at the Hsinying Hospital, after burning his own clothes.
The nursing home is on the second floor of the hospital in the southern city of Tainan. Hospital security video broadcast on TV showed nurses working frantically to save patients, wheeling their beds into nearby corridors and performing CPR on stricken victims outside the hospital.
Hospital official Tsai Ming-shih said that the victims died of smoke inhalation, and most of them were bedridden and too frail to run for their lives.
Tsai said the fire was extinguished about 40 minutes after it broke out and rescuers safely evacuated about 100 patients.
Prosecutor Tseng Chao-kai said police were questioning the suspect. The government-owned Central News Agency said the suspect confessed to setting the fire.
The nursing home was operated by outsiders commissioned by the hospital. Most of its patients were in serious condition and attached to nasal-gastric, urinal or respiratory tubes. Some of them had mental illnesses.
Nursing homes are a relatively new phenomenon in Taiwan, where Confucian values dictate that family members care for elderly relatives themselves, rather than consigning them to institutions.
Taiwan yesterday marked "Day for the Elderly," and officials handed out packets of money to citizens 80 years of age and older.
Police did not identify the suspect, but Taiwan television stations reported that he set the 3am fire because he was unhappy about his own protracted illness. The reports also said the man was found naked, hiding in a storage facility at the Hsinying Hospital, after burning his own clothes.
The nursing home is on the second floor of the hospital in the southern city of Tainan. Hospital security video broadcast on TV showed nurses working frantically to save patients, wheeling their beds into nearby corridors and performing CPR on stricken victims outside the hospital.
Hospital official Tsai Ming-shih said that the victims died of smoke inhalation, and most of them were bedridden and too frail to run for their lives.
Tsai said the fire was extinguished about 40 minutes after it broke out and rescuers safely evacuated about 100 patients.
Prosecutor Tseng Chao-kai said police were questioning the suspect. The government-owned Central News Agency said the suspect confessed to setting the fire.
The nursing home was operated by outsiders commissioned by the hospital. Most of its patients were in serious condition and attached to nasal-gastric, urinal or respiratory tubes. Some of them had mental illnesses.
Nursing homes are a relatively new phenomenon in Taiwan, where Confucian values dictate that family members care for elderly relatives themselves, rather than consigning them to institutions.
Taiwan yesterday marked "Day for the Elderly," and officials handed out packets of money to citizens 80 years of age and older.
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