Fire Kills 30 at Burmese Refugee Camp

A fire ripped through a Burmese refugee camp in Thailand Friday, killing more than 30 residents and destroying more than 100 homes, according to officials and local residents.

The blaze at the Ban Mae Surin camp was the worst since it was established in 1991 in Mae Hong Son province for ethnic minorities fleeing fighting between rebels and government troops in Burma’s remote border regions.

A priest who lives near the camp in Khun Yuam district told RFA’s Burmese Service that he had been informed that “more than 30 people were burned” to death.

“Sections 1 and 4 were totally destroyed,” the priest said.

“The fire started around 1:00 p.m. local time,” he said, adding that by the time it was put out three hours later, more than 100 homes had been destroyed.

The Associated Press quoted provincial governor Naramol Palawat as saying that 100 thatch roof huts were destroyed in the fire, which was sparked by a cooking accident.

She said that those who had lost their shelters are being temporarily housed in tents.

The AP also quoted a local emergency worker as saying that two people had been taken to a hospital in Chiang Mai, the nearest big city to the isolated camp.

The worker, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said that several dozen people suffered minor injuries in the blaze.

A senior national intelligence official told Agence France-Presse that most of the dead were women, the elderly, and children.

“Some 200 are wounded and hospitalized,” the official said.

AFP quoted Thai Interior Minister Jarupong Ruaengsuwan, who pledged to investigate the cause of the fire.

Burmese refugees

Ban Mae Surin camp consists of an area of around 75 acres (30 hectares) in a remote region of Thailand along the border with Burma, according to the Bangkok-based nongovernmental organization The Border Consortium.

The camp’s 3,300 refugees are around 85 percent ethnic Karen and nearly 14 percent Karenni, the group says.

Ban Mae Surin lies off Thailand’s main electricity grid. Its office and other major facilities can access power through the use of generators while hydroelectricity is used to power household lighting and charge vehicle batteries.

The camp is one of ten strung along the border which house a total of about 130,000 people—the first of whom began arriving in the 1980s to escape violence in Burma.

Many of the camp’s residents have registered with the U.N. as refugees and tens of thousands have resettled in third countries.

Thailand has allowed the camps to remain, despite an announcement two years ago that it would close them when a nominally civilian government took power in Burma under President Thein Sein after decades of military rule.

Bangkok has pledged that it will only send refugees home when it is safe.

Thein Sein had ordered a halt to military offensives against ethnic rebels last year, and since he came to office, Burmese authorities have signed peace agreements with 10 armed ethnic groups, including the Karen. The Karenni are currently in ceasefire negotiations with the government.

Fires common

Fires are common at the refugee camps, particularly during Thailand’s hot season, which is fast approaching. Shelters are often built side by side, and a lack of firefighting equipment means large swaths of the camps can be destroyed at a time.

Hundreds of homes were destroyed at a different border camp in February last year by a fire that the authorities also blamed on cooking.

Around 60 homes were razed at Ban Mae Surin in March 2010 after an unattended candle led to a fire that engulfed Section 4 within half an hour, though no residents were seriously injured in the incident.

Authorities called the accident the worst in the camp’s history.

Reported by Aung Myat Soe for RFA’s Burmese Service. Translated by Khet Mar. Written in English by Joshua Lipes.