No fewer than 46 people perished and dozens seriously injured in a fire at a 13-storey tower block in southern Taiwan, officials say.
The blaze started in the 13-storey commercial and residential building at 2:54 a.m. local time (2:54 p.m. ET) in Kaohsiung city’s Yancheng district in the early hours of Thursday, according to Taiwan’s official Central News Agency (CNA).
It took firefighters more than four hours to extinguish it, a local fire department said.
The fire department told the BBC that 79 people had been taken to hospital, including 14 in a serious condition.
A total of 139 fire trucks and ambulances were deployed to the scene and extinguished the fire by 7:17 a.m. (7:17 pm ET), CNA said. By midday, at least 62 people between the ages of 8 and 83 had been rescued.
More than 100 residents, many of them senior citizens with physical disabilities, live in the building, according to CNA.
The cause of the fire is unclear and investigators are at the scene.
Officials earlier warned that people may have been trapped in the residential part of the building, between the seventh and 11th floors.
Nearby residents told local media they heard a loud bang that sounded like an explosion before the fire.
“The power lines may have been outside… these past few days there have been ‘boom’ sounds from the power [lines],” one resident said, according to Reuters news agency.
Piles of unused items on the building’s lower floors made rescue efforts more difficult.
Fire officials later urged the public not to allow rubbish to accumulate in or around their residences and to keep staircases unobstructed. The building’s lower section had once housed restaurants, karaoke bars and a cinema, but these were reportedly no longer in use.
A number of residents in the block of about 120 apartments are thought to be old or to have disabilities.
Taiwan’s President Tsai Ing-wen expressed her “deepest condolences” to the victims of the fire in a Facebook post.
Tsai promised that her government will “spare the most efforts” to rescue those who are trapped, resettle the residents affected by the fires, and provide necessary assistance to families of victims.
“Facing this serious accident, we extend our deepest condolences to the victims, and we wish the injured a speedy recovery,” she wrote on Thursday afternoon local time.
