20161117 11 dead, 75 injured in Karachi hotel fire
Malaysia Nov 17 2016 “Building”
Dead : dead more than 10 Burnout : 1 to 29 Injured : injured more than 10
11 dead, 75 injured in Karachi hotel fire
Updated: 2016-11-17 12:00
KARACHI: A pre-dawn inferno at a four-star hotel in the busy city here killed 11 people and wounded 75, police said, with desperate guests jumping from windows and scrambling down knotted bedsheets to escape.
The blaze at the Regent Plaza Hotel yesterday in the centre of the port megacity broke out when many guests were still asleep, with a lack of fire alarms and emergency exits leaving many trapped in their rooms.
At least two Pakistani international cricketers were among the guests, one-dayers Sohaib Maqsood and Hammad Azam, though they were not believed to be seriously injured.
“The hotel had no fire safety system and no fire exit to evacuate people, they had no fire alarm,” said Karachi mayor Waseem Akhtar to reporters at the site.
“Trapped people showed courage and made ropes of bedsheets and came out one by one, many people have been injured,” said hotel guest Saeed ur Rehman, himself wounded in the fire.
Guests were left helpless, he said, for hours.
Police said it took up to three hours to bring the fire under control.
“We have received 11 dead bodies and 75 injured, four women were among the dead,” said Semi Jamali, a doctor at Karachi’s Jinnah hospital.
Many of the victims had suffered from smoke inhalation or suffocated, Jamali said, but others had cuts or fractures suffered as they leapt from the eight-storey hotel’s upper floors to safety.
Some trapped by the spreading blaze had knotted bedsheets together in a desperate attempt to climb out from their rooms, with the makeshift ropes seen dangling from windows at the site. — AFP
Web Source：Thestar
http://www.thestar.com.my/news/regional/2016/12/06/11-dead-75-injured-in-karachi-hotel-fire/