Myojo 56 building fire
Coordinates: 35°41′41″N 139°42′05″E / 35.694694°N 139.701444°E The Myojo 56 building fire (明星56ビル火災 Myōjō Gojū-Roku Biru Kasai?) began at about 01:00 local time on September 1, 2001 in the Myojo 56 building, located in the Kabukicho section of Shinjuku, Tokyo, Japan.
The fire, the fifth-deadliest in post-war Japanese history, claimed 44 lives and burned for five hours before being extinguished. In the aftermath of the incident, media coverage (which declined after the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks) focused on the arrest and conviction of the property owners for criminal negligence and on the building’s putative ties to organized crime.
The fire burned on the third floor of the building. When the fire broke out, 19 people were on the third floor and 28 people were on the fourth floor. Three employees jumped out of the building from the third floor and survived, suffering injury. Witnesses who saw one of the employees called an ambulance.
Emergency responders arriving to treat the jumpers learned of the building fire and evacuation efforts commenced. Firefighters removed the bodies of 44 people (32 men and 12 women) from inside the building, and rescued those who managed to flee to the roof.
Police officials remarked that the lethality of the fire was exacerbated by multiple violations of the fire code, including blocked fire doors and stairwells. The main cause of death among the fire's victims was found to be Carbon monoxide poisoning. An investigation conducted by the Metropolitan Police Department concluded that if the building’s automated fire doors had not been prevented from closing, deadly gases would not have reached the building’s occupied floors for at least 20 minutes.
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