Former Carina Plaza management head jailed for 8 years for fatal fire

Nguyen Quoc Tuan, former management head of a Ho Chi Minh City apartment complex, was sentenced to eight years’ imprisonment Friday for his responsibility in a 2018 fire that killed 13 residents.

The Carina Plaza apartment complex in District 8 caught fire on March 23, 2018, killing 13 residents, injuring 72 others and burning nearly 500 motorbikes and 81 cars.

Nguyen Van Tung, former director of Hung Thanh Construction, Trading and Service Co., Ltd., the developer of the complex, received six years and six months in prison.

Both were convicted of violating fire prevention and fighting regulations.

The judges ruled that Tung and Tuan clearly recognized their responsibilities for ensuring the safety of all activities in the apartment building. But, when they learned that the fire protection system was not working, they did not promptly replace or fix it.

In addition, Tung lent pressure compensators from the complex to another building’s management unit to deal with inspections by authorities, further compromising Carina Plaza’s ability to fight the fire that broke out.

The judges determined that in this case, Tuan, as head of the management board – a unit hired by the investor to manage and operate the apartment complex, bore the main responsibility.

“Tuan was aware of the non-functioning fire alarm and fighting system but did not request for it to be repaired or replaced,” they said, adding that leaving all fire doors open was also the responsibility of the management board.

However, the judges also took cognizance of a number of extenuating circumstances including sincere testimony, good family background, remorse and efforts to fix the damage in awarding reduced sentences to the defendants.

Investigators concluded that the fire started at midnight from a scooter in the building’s basement parking lot and spread without any warning as residents slept.

The fire alarms did not go off, the automatic sprinklers in the building failed to deploy and the emergency lights did not come on. All fire doors in the building had also been wedged open with bricks, allowing smoke to billow up to houses, causing most of the deaths.

So far, the developer has paid VND108 billion ($4.45 million) in compensation to the fire victims.