17 killed in fire at shoddy India hotel

NEW DELHI — A fire engulfed a shoddily built budget hotel in central New Delhi early Tuesday, killing 17 people and injuring at least four others, including a woman from Myanmar who leaped from an upper floor to escape the flames, Indian authorities said.

Three of those killed were members of a family who had traveled to India’s capital from Kerala in southern India to attend a wedding, family friend Arvind Vishwanathan said outside a hospital mortuary.

Most of the deaths at the Arpit Palace Hotel in Karol Bagh, an area in India’s capital city popular with tourists because of its shops and budget hotels, were due to suffocation, said Satyendar Kumar Jain, the Delhi government minister of health and urban development, as he toured the site after the fire was extinguished.

The hotel developer had a permit from the fire department to build up to four stories — the standard height in central Delhi. But the building appeared to have six floors, including a basement and a kitchen built on top of the roof, Jain said.

“Carelessness on the part of authorities is evident. We are going to investigate, and the wrongdoer will be punished,” he said.

Hotel guest Sivanand Chand, 43, said he was jolted awake around 4 a.m., struggling to breathe.

The hallway was dark and thick with smoke, so Chand turned back into his room and opened a window. He saw flames rising fast.

“In 15 minutes, the whole room was black,” he said.

A video shot by a worker at a nearby hotel showed flames consuming the top of the building, which authorities said contained an unauthorized makeshift kitchen formed from sheets of fiberglass.

Chand said rescue efforts were delayed because the first fire trucks arrived with manual ladders that weren’t tall enough to reach his floor.

Some 100 firefighters and 25 fire engines responded to the fire, which engulfed all but the ground floor of the hotel, fire officer Vijay Paul said.

About three dozen people were rescued, Paul said.