Hotel fire extinguished without casualties thanks to sprinklers... Presumed arson by business owner

Fire extinguished before the arrival of the pump truck… “Incentives for sprinkler installation must be reviewed.”

The business owner presumes arson in the lobby and elevator.

(Jeonju = Yonhap News) Reporter Kyung-jae Jeong = A hotel fire in the early morning that could have spread into a major disaster was extinguished without any casualties.

This is thanks to the sprinklers installed in the relatively recently built hotel operating on time.

Sprinklers extinguished the fire before the fire department's pump truck arrived at the scene.

According to the Jeonbuk Provincial Fire Department on the 24th, a guest reported a fire at a hotel in Songcheon-dong, Deokjin-gu, Jeonju-si at 5:16 am.

Police and fire authorities dispatched 24 vehicles, including pump trucks, and 65 firefighting personnel to the scene due to concerns about casualties within the lodging establishment due to the fire.

As the roads were not blocked during the early morning hours, firefighting personnel and equipment arrived at the scene within a few minutes of receiving the report, but the major fire had already been extinguished.

Fire authorities transferred three people, including a hotel owner in his 70s, who suffered burns all over his body in the fire, and his wife and son, who had injured arms and legs, to a burn specialist hospital.

At the time, 45 people were staying in 30 of the 36 hotel rooms, but all of them were evacuated to a safe place and there were no major casualties.

An official from the provincial fire headquarters said, "It appears that the sprinklers activated as soon as the fire started and the fire was extinguished quickly. Firefighters and police officers who arrived later extinguished the remaining fire with fire extinguishers."

This hotel, located near Eco City, Jeonju's new downtown, opened in August 2019 and was found to have sprinklers installed in the lobby and hallways in accordance with specifications.

According to sprinkler installation standards, hotel and inn buildings are required to install sprinklers only in rooms on the 11th floor or higher in accordance with the 1992 Fire Service Act.

As a result of subsequent revisions to related laws, the obligation to install all floors was applied to hotels and inns with 6 or more floors in 2018, but it was not retroactively applied to previously built buildings.

For this reason, during the 'Gyeonggi Bucheon Hotel Fire' on August 22, 2024, sprinklers were not installed in the building and the hotel staff even turned off the fire alarm and then turned it back on, resulting in the death of 7 guests and the injury of 12.

Previously, in the 'Jeonju Inn arson incident' in August 2019, three guests who had been making a living by picking up waste paper died because firefighting facilities such as sprinklers were not installed.

Gong Ha-seong, a professor of fire and disaster prevention at Woosuk University, said, "Everyone knows the importance of sprinklers in the early stages of a fire. However, from the perspective of lodging business owners (who are not subject to mandatory installation), they seem to be reluctant because they have to stop operations during the installation period and have to bear the installation costs."

Professor Gong suggested, “Because the safety of guests is more important than anything else, I think it is necessary to consider providing incentives such as tax benefits or reducing the number of fire inspections if sprinklers are installed in such lodging establishments.”

He added, “One way is to make it mandatory to disclose whether sprinklers are installed in the facility on accommodation reservation sites, etc.”

The police believe that Mr. A, the drunk business owner, sprinkled flammable substances in the hotel lobby, elevator, and parking lot and set the fire that day. They plan to investigate the exact motive for the crime as soon as he completes treatment.