At least six killed in fire at Busan hotel construction site, officials say
*Event date: 2025-02-14*
At least six people were killed and at least seven others were injured when a fire tore through a hotel construction site in the South Korean port city of Busan, according to Al Jazeera’s report based on Yonhap and other local reporting. Firefighters were still searching the interior of the building as the casualty count continued to evolve.
The blaze broke out around mid-morning and spread quickly through the multistorey site, the report said. Busan’s fire service deployed 90 firefighters and used helicopters to rescue workers trapped inside the building, including 14 people lifted off the rooftop. More than 100 people were evacuated, although it was not immediately clear whether everyone on site had been accounted for.
The cause of the fire remained unknown, but media reports linked the blaze to insulation material stored on the first floor of the construction site. Television footage showed smoke pouring from the modern glass-fronted building, underscoring the speed and intensity of the incident.
South Korea’s acting president, Choi Sang-mok, said all available personnel and equipment were being sent to the site. That response reflected the seriousness of the fire as emergency crews tried both to suppress the blaze and establish how many workers had been inside when it started.
The report said the hotel reportedly belonged to Banyan Tree, the Singapore-based luxury hotel and resort chain, though the ownership detail was still being discussed in local coverage rather than formally confirmed by the article’s own authorities. Al Jazeera’s account also noted that casualties and damage were still being assessed, making the toll provisional rather than final.
Busan has seen another recent major fire incident in the weeks before the construction-site blaze, after an Air Busan plane caught fire shortly after takeoff from Gimhae International Airport. In that earlier case, all passengers and crew were safely evacuated, and the fire was later attributed to a portable battery pack in an overhead cabin. The juxtaposition has intensified attention on fire safety and emergency response in one of South Korea’s busiest industrial cities.
For the construction-site disaster, the central facts were clear even as investigators and firefighters kept working: a morning fire, multiple dead and injured, a major rescue effort, and a still-uncertain origin. The next stage will be determining whether the building’s materials, site practices or emergency systems contributed to the speed at which the fire spread.
