A fire broke out at a hotel in Bucheon, Gyeonggi, on Thursday evening, leaving seven people dead and 12 injured. (YONHAP)

A 28-year-old victim of the deadly hotel fire in Bucheon, Gyeonggi, that killed seven people Thursday night made a final call to her parents to say goodbye, her father said Friday.

“Mom, dad, I don’t think I can last even five minutes. You have to live well, even for me,” the victim, named Kim, said during her last phone call to her 56-year-old father, her father told the JoongAng Ilbo at the funeral hall of Incheon St. Mary’s Hospital in Bupyeong district, Incheon, at 2 a.m. Friday.

Seven people were killed and a dozen others injured in the fire at a hotel in Bucheon, Gyeonggi, authorities said.

The tragic incident occurred on Kim’s father’s birthday. “I can’t believe I have to prepare a memorial table for my daughter on my birthday,” said the father, fighting back tears.

Kim was the breadwinner of the family. Her father said she worked at a cell phone store during the day and took a part-time job at a fast-food restaurant late into the night. She recently enrolled in a distance learning university to continue her education, which she had previously put off.

The fire broke out at 7:39 p.m. on Thursday on the eighth floor of a nine-story hotel in Jung-dong, Wonmi district, Bucheon. Among the seven fatalities were guests aged between 20 and 50, firefighters and police said on Friday.

Among the victims were four men and three women, police said, all of them Korean citizens.

Twelve other people were injured, three of them in serious condition, and were taken to hospital for treatment. None of the injuries are considered life-threatening.

“Around the time the fire alarm went off, I heard people screaming and then saw smoke,” a Chinese national in his 40s who lived on the fifth floor of the hotel said in an interview with local media outlet Yonhap News. “I quickly realized there was a fire, and without having a chance to pack my things, I evacuated with my group.”

The fire department is conducting an investigation together with other authorities to determine the cause of the fire and assess the extent of the damage. (YONHAP)

According to authorities, most of the victims were from the eighth and ninth floors near room 810, where the fire is believed to have originated.

A man and a woman were killed when they jumped from their eighth-floor room onto an inflatable mattress outside the hotel, Lee Sang-don, head of the fire protection division of the Bucheon Fire Department, said during a briefing at the site.

“The mattress was initially positioned correctly, but turned over after the jump,” Lee said.

Another woman was found in cardiac arrest in the eighth floor stairwell and taken to hospital, but did not survive.

Although the fire in Room 810 did not spread to the rest of the building, it produced heavy smoke and toxic gases, which authorities say may have been responsible for the majority of the victims.

“When emergency responders arrived, the hotel was already filled with smoke,” Lee said. “Smoke was pouring out of the guest room windows.”

The fire brigade managed to extinguish the fire at 10:26 p.m., almost three hours after it broke out.

The hotel has 64 rooms and accommodated 27 guests on the day of the fire.

Room 810 was unoccupied when the fire broke out, according to authorities. The investigation revealed that a guest who entered Room 810 on the day of the fire reported the smell of smoke and requested a room change.

A Level 1 emergency response was activated within three minutes of the fire being reported, followed by a Level 2 response within 18 minutes. More than 70 vehicles, including pump trucks, and 160 firefighters were deployed to control the fire and conduct rescue operations.

In addition, over 90 police officers and 60 city officials helped with perimeter control and rescue efforts.

The emergency call was lifted on Thursday at 10:35 p.m.

Built in 2004, the hotel does not have sprinklers installed in its rooms. Since 2017, revised laws have required new buildings with more than six stories to have sprinklers on every floor. However, this rule does not apply retroactively, making older buildings more vulnerable to fire.

“The victims were taken to six different medical facilities, including Soon Chun Hyang University Hospital,” said Kim In-jae, director of the Bucheon Public Health Center.

The fire brigade, together with the responsible authorities, began an investigation at 11 a.m. on Friday to determine the cause of the fire and assess the extent of the damage.

BY WOO JI-WON, LEE YOUNG-KEUN ([email protected])