Blaze at homeless shelter kills 21 in Poland

WARSAW, Poland - A fast-moving fire tore through a three-story building housing homeless families in northwestern Poland early Monday, killing 21 people and injuring 20 more, including some who leaped from windows to escape the flames, officials said.

Firefighters finished picking through the charred hull of the shelter, which was run by the local government, in search of more bodies and clues to what caused the fire. Poland’s
president visited the site and suggested the construction appeared sub-par and might have contributed to the intensity of the blaze.

The fire broke out around 1 a.m. in the shelter for people waiting for government housing in Kamien Pomorski, 370 miles (600 kilometers) northwest of the Polish capital and near the Baltic Sea coast, said Pawel Fratczak, a spokesman for Poland’s national firefighters.

Fratczak said 21 people died in the fire, but noted that “it is going to be hard to identify many of them quickly because they are so badly burned.”

Footage broadcast on TVN24 television taken when firefighters first arrived on the scene showed the stone and metal building engulfed in flames, while in later video firefighters picked through the building’s charred, gutted shell with axes.