Nine people died and 12 were injured during a fire at a Taichung nightclub early this morning.
According to what I see on TV, a performer during a ‘mengnan’ show (sort of a male strip show) lost control over a kind of torch, which hit the ceiling and turned the place into hell.
The club had only recently passed fire safety reviews, but putting on shows involving torches and other fire-related implements was explicitly banned. Some TV stations also say the place did not have a license to sell alcohol.
I still can’t figure out the name of the club, some reports call it Ala, others have a name in Chinese characters which looks vaguely like it could be Jack Daniels. For those of you who know Taichung, it’s on a street called Zhongxing.
Reminds me of the big KTV fires back in the early 90s.
Damn, that’s about a block away from my apartment. What time did the fire start? I was on my way home from work around 1:00am. I noticed a lot more police checkpoints than normal for a Saturday, but I assumed they were cracking down on the street racers.
A side note: most places in Taichung that are bars do not have licenses to serve alcohol. That’s from a friend who owns a bar, but can’t get one because of regulations not allowing it.
The guy that started the fire got out without a scratch. How come they didnt get everyone out? Maybe all restaurants and other public places should be required to practice fire drills once a month?
Fire tricks in small places must be stopped. There has been similar disasters in other pubs worldwide.
I hope whoever decided to go ahead with a show that included a fire trick that was expressely forbidden suffers, big time. Thanks to that asshat, 9 people are dead.
I’m confused. The China Post article says that a witness who escaped from the second floor said that the fire came from downstairs, but the Apple Daily animated reenactment seems to depict it as starting upstairs.
seems the flames ignited the ceiling downstairs and many of the patrons on the second floor realized too late what was happening and died. No organized evacuation took place it seemed.
I went to Vicious Circle the other night and was thinking about the fire exit situation. Its a small club in the basement. There’s a narrow stairway that goes down to a door that opens inside. I don’t know if there is another door in the back, but if there was ever a fire that door would be a death trap. Its a cool club, but I hope they have an easy exit for an emergency.
Have you noticed that there are so many public buildings that have pull to exit doors? It is common sense for fire safety to have push to exit doors. If it’s not already, it should definitely be in the fire code.
Does anyone know where/if the Taipei City fire code is posted online? I found some of them at the Fire Dept website but not the ones I was looking for (pertaining to fire exits). The Taida gym has decided to lock and block several signed emergency exits. It has to be illegal to block/lock a fire exit right?
How smart does one have to be to see that it’s dangerous to use flames indoors? And especially if the venue is overcrowded and not suited for use of open flame performances. :eh:
Instead of just putting amendments on licensing rules/laws and upping checks to verify the licensing is according to the truth …
