Locals in Taiwan’s southern district of Kaohsiung grieved on Thursday after a residential building caught fire, killing 46 and wounding 41 others.
“I feel quite sad,” said a former resident of the buidling, Li Wen-Hsiang. “It’s all gone, this building has been here for more than 30 years.”
Workers were seen clearing debris from the fire late into Thursday night, Reuters video footage showed.
The fire broke out in the 40-year-old building in Kaohsiung’s Yancheng district in the early hours of Thursday morning and was extinguished around dawn.
Kaohsiung’s fire department confirmed in a statement that 46 people had died in the fire.
Residents that were left without a home for the night were relocated to relatives’ houses, an official told
Li Wen-Hsiang further said, “I feel quite sad, it used to be very affluent here, and then it somehow just turned into this. My family used to live here, downstairs used to be quite fancy, there was an ice rink and even karaoke. Really nice. Now it’s all gone, this building has been here for more than 30 years.”
“The neighbours are all very nice, I used to live here from when I was born until the age of nine. Then we moved away, but my relatives still live in the area and my uncle often comes around here,” he added.
