What went wrong in response to Bucheon hotel fire?

Deadly blaze raises concerns about rescue mattress, lack of sprinklers, poor initial response

A man stands in front of a hotel in Bucheon, Gyeonggi Province, where a deadly fire broke out on Thursday that left seven dead and a dozen others injured on Saturday. (Yonhap)

Funerals for the victims of Thursday‘s Bucheon hotel fire were held on Sunday, but the controversy surrounding the tragedy has intensified while authorities have been searching to identify the circumstances that led to seven deaths and a dozen other injuries.

Amid the ongoing efforts to determine the exact cause of the fire, a debate about the inflatable rescue mattress used by firefighters erupted, as two of the seven people died attempting to jump onto it.

Soon after the blaze broke out, video footage showed that a man and woman jumped out of the window of the building‘s seventh floor onto an inflatable rescue mattress set up by firefighters on the ground without supervision.

The mattress -- 4.5 meters long, 3 meters high and 7.5 meters wide -- flipped over after the woman landed on its edge. A few seconds later, the man attempted to jump onto it as well but due to the flipping, ended up on the ground, not the mattress. The two were taken to the hospital in cardiac arrest and were pronounced dead.

Some have pointed out professional negligence that resulted in the deaths, while the fire authorities said that they did not have enough personnel at the time to secure the mattress properly.

The absence of sprinklers in the hotel was also blamed for the deaths.

Fire regulations mandated that all new accommodation facilities with more than six stories have sprinklers on every floor in 2018. However, this Bucheon hotel, built in 2004, had no sprinklers installed, which could have reduced damages by suppressing fires quickly and in areas that are difficult to access, according to safety experts.

“Sprinkler heads are designed to activate automatically when the surrounding temperature reaches a high level and release water to extinguish the fire. Early fire suppression is effective as it helps to control and put out a fire before it gets big,” Li Ki-hwan, a professor at Kyungil University‘s Department of Fire Safety, noted.

In light of the tragedy, Han Dong-hoon, chair of the ruling People Power Party, also stressed fire safety upgrades for old buildings during a high-level policy consultation meeting on Sunday.

The government and the ruling People Power Party also agreed to mandate the installation of wet sprinkler systems capable of detecting fires early and helping prevent their spread in all new buildings with underground parking lots.

A poor initial response and possible negligence in building management were other factors raised that may have been behind the incident.

According to reports, the hotel did not take steps to identify a burning smell after a guest filed a complaint with the hotel about a possible fire, failing to take timely action in evacuating the guests.

In addition, a phone call between fire authorities and one victim during the accident also showed a communication problem as the victim seemed unable to respond to officials‘ instructions to get out of the building as quickly as possible.

Meanwhile, 1,843 fires were reported at accommodation facilities nationwide between 2018 and 2023, according to data from the National Fire Data System compiled by the National Fire Agency.

Of them, 645 fires broke out in motels, followed by those at family-size holiday lodgings called “pension” in Korean with 328 and hotels with 273 cases, respectively.

By Park Jun-hee(junheee@heraldcorp.com)