55, Mainly Teenagers, Killed in A Beer Hall Fire

South Korean police on Sunday arrested four workers for flouting safety regulations after 55 mainly teenage revellers died when a fire ripped through an illegal beer hall.

Officers said they were also searching for the owner of the second-floor bar in Inchon, a big port city located about 40 km west of Seoul, where underage high school pupils were drinking when the blaze erupted two floors below them late Saturday. Some 78 people were injured.

The men arrested were an electrician, two interior designers and a builder. They allegedly failed to take proper measures to guard against fire when carrying out renovation work in a karaoke lounge below the bar.

'There were lots of inflammable liquids on the floor but the workers did not take adequate measures to protect the electrical wires on the floor against a possible short circuit,' a police detective said here.

The fire erupted in the four-story bulding in Inchon, as workers completed electrical work in the underground karaoke restaurant, witnesses and firefighters said.

'So far, we know that 55 people, mostly between 16 and 17 years old, died in the fire which spread through the building after an explosion in the underground restaurant,' a firefighter said.

Workers were cleaning up after electrical work had been completed in the underground bar where large cans of paint thinner were scattered on the floor near newly laid electrical cables.

The drinkers were trapped in the second-floor bar, which was not licensed and which had no fire escape or emergency exit. Scores were dead by the time the blaze was brought under control less than half an hour later.

'There were fire extinguishers in the beer hall but there was no time for anybody to use them because the victims were immediately suffocated by toxic smoke,' witnesses said.

Other firefighters said there were screens over the windows of the bar preventing the 'intoxicated and suffocating' victims from jumping to the ground, only three metres (10 feet) below.

In July, a holiday camp blaze southwest of Seoul killed 23 people including 19 children. A total of 15 people, including government officials, were arrested over that fire.