Four dead, 16 injured in Batam hotel fire

Fadli, The Jakarta Post, Batam, Riau

At least one foreigner and three Indonesians were killed and 22 others injured as fire gutted a four-star hotel in the industrial island of Batam, Riau province, early on Sunday.

The fire damaged the Harmoni Hotel, located on Jl. Imam Bonjol, Nagoya, Batu Ampar subdistrict, at 4 a.m., hours after it hosted a wedding party in its 9th-floor ballroom. The party had ended by midnight.

A short circuit was suspected of starting the fire at the hotel, which was accommodating more than 200 people at the time of the incident.

Police are still investigating the cause of the accident.

"We await the arrival of a forensic team from Medan (North Sumatra) to help investigate the fire," Barelang Police deputy chief Adj. Sr. Comr. Heru Winarko said.

He confirmed the fire started in the ballroom, but could not say how much damage it had caused.

Desi, an eyewitness, said a carpet caught fire on the ninth floor, and was attributed to the short circuit.

The hotel management had advised the wedding party committee beforehand not to use the carpet during the event, he added.

The four dead people included Zul Irianto, 35, Nur Zein and an unidentified woman. The police have not yet identified the deceased foreigner believed to be a Singaporean.

Panicked Irianto, a civil servant, and Nur Zein, secretary of the Siak legislative council, died when they jumped from the hotel's seventh floor and third floor respectively, as the fire produced thick smoke in their rooms.

The two hit walls on lower floors during their fatal descent.

The suffocating smoke also caused panic among the other hotel guests.

At least 16 of the wounded victims were treated at a hospital in Batam, about 20 kilometers from neighboring Singapore.

A fire team arrived an hour after the fire had started and had gutted all rooms on the ninth floor. It then quickly spread to other rooms, including those on the first floor.

Several cars parked at the hotel were also damaged as panicked tenants rushed to flee the inferno.

Harmoni Hotel general manager Angeline Loo said the hotel had 235 bedrooms, 200 of them were occupied on the weekend.

Speaking to journalists, she said survivors, excluding those injured, were evacuated to several nearby hotels.

Loo said the management was calculating the losses caused by the fire that was extinguished after two hours.

Batam is a regular destination for foreign tourists, particularly from Singapore, with hotels mostly booked out on weekends.