A guest at a nightclub located within the Kandawgyi Palace Hotel compound says hotel staff ignored him when he reported a possible fire 45 minutes before the Fire Services Department was called to the scene in the early hours of October 19. Two foreign tourists were killed in the blaze, and another two people were injured.
“I went to the Clubhouse for a show yesterday. The music was pretty good,” Yangon resident Kaung Htut wrote in a Facebook post the evening after the hotel burned down. “When I was on my out at around 2:45am, I started to smell something burning.”
“I told the security about the smell and to check it out. But the security told me not worry since many people were smoking,” he wrote.
Kaung Htut got into his car and talked on the phone for about 15 minutes. When he was about to start the engine, he saw smoke and reported it again.
“I saw some smoke coming out from the top of the building, so I decided not to leave and drove around [the compound] and showed a security guard in the parking lot the smoke and told him not to be careless,” Kaung Htut’s post went on.
“He told me not to worry and said the smoke was from an overheated boiler and perhaps I drank a bit too much and to be careful when I drive.”
Before he left just after 3am, Kaung Htut took a video of the smoke emanating from the hotel, hoping to show it to the hotel manager the next day to see if there was a problem.
That was not to be. The fire grew out of control by 3:15am, and the Fire Services Department was called at 3:30am. It took 500 firefighters using more than 50 trucks three hours to bring the fire under control, after which only a shell of the building remained.
“If the fire had been extinguished systematically by the fire brigade, such a tragic loss wouldn’t have happened,” Kaung Htut wrote.
Kaung Htut told Coconuts that a representative from the Htoo Group, the conglomerate that owns the Kandawgyi Palace Hotel, contacted him to ask about the identities of the security guards who allegedly ignored his warnings. Kaung Htut said he did not remember their identities but was certain that all of the staff in the parking lot at the time had seen the smoke.
Several security staff guarding the premises of the hotel told Coconuts on October 24 that they were not able to confirm Kaung Htut’s account. Htoo Hospitality CEO Raymond Bragg did not reply to a message from Coconuts about the allegations.
Neither the cause of the deadly fire nor the cost of the damages have been determined yet, but the Fire Services Department announced today that a six-member panel has been appointed to investigate it.
While some have praised the hotel staff’s quickness to awaken and evacuate nearly all of the 141 guests from the building, the Htoo Group has come under criticism for claiming that “all fire protection systems and all systems work well,” even after several guests confirmed that “there was no alarm of any kind.”
Hotel manager U Thiha is expected to appear in court on November 1.
Kaung Htut said the loss of the Kandawgyi Palace Hotel is emblematic of Yangon’s vulnerability to fires.
“When the Mingalar Market was on fire [in January 2016], I just had to stand and watch my shop burning. The fire brigade needs to upgrade its system of putting out larger fires. Now, a hotel made of teak that housed many precious, beautiful Myanmar heritage items is gone.”
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