“I heard a lot of shouts for help. We could not help them much.” That is what a woman named Hoa, who lived near the building, told AFP after a fire tore through a Hanoi apartment block in September 2023. Police later confirmed that 56 people had been killed and 37 injured, the deadliest fire Vietnam had seen in 20 years, according to DW.
The blaze started late on Tuesday 12 September. Residents described a loud bang at around 23:00 local time, then black smoke climbing through the stairwell. Witnesses said it began on the parking floor, which was packed with motorbikes. The cause was still under investigation when the first reports went out.
A building with no way out
The design is what made it lethal. AFP reported that the block had a single exit and no exterior escape ladders, and its small balconies were sealed with iron bars. One family got out only by smashing the metal railings across their window and laying a ladder to the neighbouring building. Other witnesses saw people jump to nearby rooftops. One said a child was put into a plastic basket and lowered down. Another saw a little boy thrown from a high floor while neighbours held up a mattress.
Help was slow to reach the scene for a plain reason. Fifteen fire engines were sent, the BBC reported, but they could not get close because the alley was too narrow. Of the people inside, about 70 were rescued and more than 50 of them needed hospital treatment, DW said. The building was believed to house some 150 residents.
Grief at the morgue, an arrest at dawn
By the next day hundreds had gathered outside a morgue in the west of the city. “I lost my daughter, who was staying with her mother,” one man told AFP, unsure where his wife was. Five women sitting on the floor said their “whole family had gone.” Thirty-nine of the dead had been identified at that point.
Police detained the building’s owner, Nghiem Quang Minh, accusing him of violating fire-prevention regulations, the government said in a statement. Prime Minister Pham Minh Chinh visited the site on Wednesday and called for fire-safety rules to be completed for small apartment buildings and for densely populated residential areas.
The shift underneath
Hanoi’s growth is the backdrop. The BBC noted that the city’s population had quadrupled to 5.25 million in 20 years, and authorities themselves said many newly built apartments did not meet fire safety regulations. A year earlier, 33 people died in a karaoke club fire in southern Vietnam where windows had been bricked up. The BBC pointed to similar cases across South East Asia, including Thailand, where rules were later found to be inadequate or simply not enforced.
VnExpress returned to the Khuong Ha street fire in May 2024, after another Hanoi house fire, on Trung Kinh street, killed 14 people. It cited Ministry of Public Security data showing more than 17,000 fires nationwide in the five years up to 2022, with 433 deaths. Architect Dao Ngoc Nghiem said enforcement and inspection of fire safety were not strict enough. Tenants quoted there kept renting in cramped alleys anyway, because the rooms were cheap and close to work and school.
Sources
- Vietnam fire: 56 dead and dozens injured in Hanoi apartment blaze (BBC News, Jonathan Head)
- Vietnam: Apartment block fire in Hanoi, 56 dead (DW)
- Deadly Hanoi fires raise alarms for cramped alleyway residents (VnExpress International)
