Death toll in Gunma nursing home fire rises to 10

MAEBASHI, Japan, March 21 Kyodo -
Three more people have died in hospital due to a fire late Thursday evening at
a nursing home for the elderly in Shibukawa, Gunma Prefecture, bringing the
death toll to 10, police said Saturday.
After the fire, which burned three buildings at the Tamayura nursing home, the
bodies of seven people were recovered from one of the buildings which was very
badly burned, the police said.
The three -- Hideo Aizawa, 88, Hide Yamada, 72, and Takaji Fukai, 77 -- were
among four people who were rescued from a separate facility building that was
also burned in Thursday's fire. The three were taken to hospital with burn
injuries, but died later.
Staff at the Tamayura home said there were 17 people in the facility at the
time of the fire, which broke out at around 11 p.m. Thursday and was put out
about two hours later.
The seven recovered bodies are believed to be those of four men and three women
aged between 55 and 84 who remain unaccounted for, the police said while
investigating the cause of the fire.
Of the seven, one man and a woman burned to death, while two other men died of
carbon monoxide poisoning, according to the police.
Among the 10 dead, six -- Aizawa, Yamada, Fukai and three among the seven
unidentified people -- are believed to have been referred to the nursing home
by Tokyo's Sumida Ward, which deemed the facility ''excellent.''
Some residents in the vicinity of the nursing home, however, had been seeking
to have the facility shut down, with one of them urging Sumida Ward in 2006 to
stop referring people to the home, on the grounds there were problems
concerning nursing and feeding at the home, according to the residents.
The male resident, who protested to Sumida Ward via e-mail, said that the
nursing home was so under-staffed that at times none of the staff was able to
come to help an elderly person who had fallen while out for a walk.
Meanwhile, Nobuo Yokoyama, head of Sumida Ward's welfare office, paid a floral
tribute at the site of the fatal fire Saturday.
''I would like to apologize to those who died at a facility that we
introduced,'' Yokoyama told reporters.
The operator of the facility has not registered with the prefectural government
to provide nursing care services for the elderly and police began questioning
the operator's head, Goro Takakuwa, 84, on Friday.
The prefectural government was scheduled to begin investigating the facility
and its services Monday.
The facility had no sprinklers in the buildings, according to Takakuwa. It was
smaller than those required to have sprinklers, according to the prefectural
government.
==Kyodo