Hotel Fire in Bangkok 1971

[Acharn]

I'm very puzzled by this, but neither Google of Duck-Duck-Go turns anything up on this. When I was stationed at USARSUPTHAI Bangkok Detachment from April to November, 1971, there was a fire at a hotel where some of the highest officers and their families stayed. I think there was at least one fatality, but the incident is etched in my memory because the Commanding Officer of the Bangkok Detachment, a not very admirable bird colonel, was awarded the Soldier's Medal for his heroism going up and down the hallway knocking on doors to get people out of the building. I don't remember if there were any fatalities, and I am only sure it was not the Chao Phraya Hotel, which was where most junior officers stayed. There are basically only two hotel fires in the Google and Duck-Duck-Go returns for Bangkok,  a big one in 1997 and another big one in 2002. Anybody remember the name of the hotel? There was a later disaster of some kind, I think a fire, before I left in 1973. We had already set up CILTHAI, the Casualty Identification Laboratory, Thailand, which was already processing remains of suspected missing personnel who were being brought from Vietnam in an effort to resolve the POW question. They filled their morgue and put dead bodies in many local morgues as would accept them, and I remember discussion at the time how their undertaking capabilities were overstretched. I remember almost nothing about that one.

Edited March 29, 2018 by Acharn

[Thanyaburi Mac]

That's probably the incident at the Imperial Hotel, on Wireless Road towards the Ploenchit Road end.

 

https://cdnc.ucr.edu/cgi-bin/cdnc?a=d&d=DS19710420.2.2

 

Mac