A fire broke out in a three-story building in Tainan’s Lioujia District (六甲) early yesterday morning, resulting in the deaths of five people who were trapped on the third floor, the city’s fire bureau said.
The fire was extinguished at 5am and as of 9:06am, firefighters had found five charred bodies.
The bureau said it received a report of the blaze at 2:36am and it dispatched 19 vehicles and 37 personnel to put it out.
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When firefighters arrived on the scene, the third floor of the building was engulfed in flames, and the five people, thought to be members of the same family, were trapped in a corrugated steel extension at the back of the third-floor dwelling.
The fire was brought under control at 4:19am and extinguished at 5am, but temperatures inside the structure were still too high for firefighters to search the premises.
It was not until 7:12am that two charred corpses were found on the third floor before the others were discovered nearby, the bureau said, adding that it was still trying to clarify how the incident occurred.
The bureau has initially determined that the five people in the house were a 44-year-old man surnamed Chen (陳), his 39-year-old wife surnamed Wu (吳), two sons aged 15 and 18, and an eight-year-old daughter, but the bodies still have to be identified.
The family has one other daughter, who is overseas, the bureau said.
Firefighters said that the fire might have started in an agricultural machinery store on the building’s first floor, which they suspect was filled with debris and flammable liquids that likely caused the fire and fueled its quick spread.
Other details about the fire, including how it started, are still being investigated, the bureau said.
A magnitude 4.9 earthquake struck off Tainan at 11:47am today, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. The hypocenter was 32.3km northeast of Tainan City Hall at a depth of 7.3km, CWA data showed. The intensity of the quake, which gauges the actual effect of a seismic event, measured 4 in Tainan and Chiayi County on Taiwan's seven-tier intensity scale, the data showed. The quake had an intensity of 3 in Chiayi City and County, and Yunlin County, while it was measured as 2 in Kaohsiung, Nantou County, Changhua County, Taitung County and offshore Penghu County, the data showed. There were no immediate reports of
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