Baby dies as Bangkok slum fire levels 22 houses

By The Nation

 

 

A four-month-old baby died in a fire that razed 22 wooden houses in a squatter community in Bangkok’s Lat Krabang district late Sunday night.

Police said the fire started at about 10.30pm among the patch of houses on Soi Lat Krabang 3 near Wat Sangha Raja.

Crews arrived on 10 fire engines and brought the blaze under control after two hours.

 

The baby boy’s charred body was found on a bed in the house where witnesses said the fire started.

 

House owner Yutthan Wanitphansakul, 40, said he left his seven-year-old daughter in charge of the infant while he was chatting with friends at the mouth of the soi.

 

He saw his daughter running from the house as it burned and tried to go in to rescue the boy, but his neighbours held him back.

 

Lat Krabang police chief Pol Col Sarawut Siri said the cause of the fire, which damaged homes across one rai, had yet to be determined.

 

The affected families would be given temporary shelter at the temple, he said.

 

Source: http://www.nationmultimedia.com/detail/breakingnews/30333131

 

-- © Copyright The Nation 2017-12-04

As if their lives aren't hard enough already, everything they ever had has gone up in smoke and a poor child has been deprived of life, all amongst the glittering spires of Bangkok of which these people can only dream 

I have been in Bangkok and seen a slum fire, it spread quickly and it was lucky that

it happened in the afternoon or more people would have died. RIP to the baby that did

this time.

Geezer

I'm really surprised this does not happen more often. Most sois are a jumble of houses put together seemingly at random with old wooden shacks abutting other old wooden shacks or commercial buildings. Most residents cook on open coal fired pots sometimes right in their front doorways. No smoke alarms, pack rat mentality in most of these homes is a disaster waiting to happen.