No escape: Survivors recall deadly fire at Hanoi café

Nguyen Viet Cuong, 56, still trembled as he recalled about what happened. As he lied on the hospital bed at the E Hospital, Cuong remembered how he narrowly escaped death at the café on Pham Van Dong Street.

At around 10:30 p.m. on Wednesday, Cuong and three friends came to the shop after a drinking party. It was a popular place where people could gather and sing to each other, a frequent location of Cuong’s friend group.

The house has three floors and was rented by a family to function as a coffee shop on the ground floor. There are two layers of doors on the first floor: a roller door on the outside and a glass door on the inside. The second and third floors are for employees. In the middle of the building is a common path, and also the only emergency exit of the facility.

Customers coming to the place often park their vehicles in front of the door. Cars can either be parked in the front or on an empty plot near the place.

When Cuong’s group arrived, there had already been dozens of customers inside. About 5-6 motorbikes and a car were parked in the front.

“Our group walked in and chose a place near the entrance. At this time, there had already been around 2-3 tables signing up to sing, so we had to wait,” Cuong said.

Escape in fear

By 11 p.m., after 30 minutes of waiting, Cuong’s turn came. After he finished a song, he was startled by the sounds of explosions outside the door. The flames had already blocked the entrance by the time he looked out.

Cuong escaped further into the house by instincts. He later climbed the stairs to get to the second floor.

Vu Van Thanh, 38, was also at Cuong’s table. When the fire raged, the entire group panicked and each person ran in a different direction. Like many others, Thanh also climbed to the second floor once he saw how the exit has been blocked. The smoke however made it difficult for him to breathe.

“The power was out and it was dark, and I kept running. I ran until my strength ran out due to the smoke, and then I saw a fire hose,” Thanh recalled. As he regained his composure, he took off his coat and let the water pour over him. Thanh was then brought back to the ground from the second floor by firefighters.

“I wonder if my friends made it out alive,” Thanh asked himself as he stayed at the E Hospital.

At around 11:15 p.m., 10 minutes after the fire began, police of Bac Tu Liem District deployed three firefighting trucks to the scene. The flames had already spread throughout the ground floor and to a nearby shop at the time.

The police command center assessed that the situation was serious enough to warrant reinforcements, and so deployed dozens of firefighting trucks and ambulances to the scene. Volunteer emergency service FAS Angel also came to the rescue. Firefighting trucks from multiple districts rushed to the area along Pham Van Dong Street, breaking the silence of the night.

Firefighters split into three teams: one tried to put out the fire from the road; one tried to climb onto a billboard to hose water into the building; and the other group climbed to the second floor and tried to save people.

Rescuers take victims from a burned coffee shop in Hanoi’s Bac Tu Liem District, Dec. 18, 2024. Photo by Read/Huy Manh

Searching for victims

By 11:40 p.m., the fire was put under control, but the smoke was still present. Firefighters and rescuers then began to access deeper parts of the house. 10 FAS Angel members and three ambulances then split into two teams: one went inside the house to take people outside, while the other stayed outside to prepare to take people to hospital.

Hoang Gia Bao, a rescuer, was tasked with searching for people on the second and third floors. He saw that things outside the house were severely burned, while the air was thick with smoke, and the heat was unbearable. Bao decided to look inside the bathrooms on the second floor first, where he found a body that was nearly charred. He then found another body on the third floor.

“Everything was dark and I acted on instincts, scurrying around,” Bao said.

Authorities found 11 bodies in total, eight of them on the ground floor, where the flames raged the hardest. Inside the bathroom on the ground floor alone, there were five bodies piling on top of one another. The other three were found on the staircases leading to other floors.

Cao Van Hung, who allegedly set a Hanoi coffee shop on fire killing 11 people after an argument with other customers, is at a police station, Dec. 19, 2024. Photo by An Ninh Thu Do

Arsonist found

Nguyen Hai Trung, director of the Hanoi police, said an investigation into the cause of the fire was quickly launched. By 3 a.m., the police said an arson was to blame for the fire. The prime suspect was 51-year-old Cao Van Hung who lives in Dong Anh District.

Hung came to the place to drink beer alone from 9 p.m. on Wednesday. He then had a dispute with a group of seven customers, and the group settled things out on Pham Van Dong Street. After Hung got beat up, he went to the Co Nhue market, and then a shop on Phan Ba Vanh Street, to buy a bucket and around seven liters of gasoline. He then took a taxi back to the place, threw the gasoline into the ground floor and the vehicles parked outside, before lighting them up.

Authorities have yet to announce the identities of the 11 deceased victims. The E Hospital, where four victims were taken to, said the survivors were all admitted in a panicked state and with several injuries.

Hanoi has encountered several major fire cases throughout the year. Previously on May 24, two houses in an alley of Trung Kinh Street also caught fire, resulting in 14 deaths.