Tragedy Overdue: Dozens Killed In Bangkok Nightclub Fire
What a tragedy to start a hopefully better year with. A fire killed nearly 60 mostly young New Year party revelers and injured scores at the Ekamai nightclub Santika. Bodies wrapped in white cotton were laid out on the pavement in front of the club which was popular with foreigners as well. Most of the fatality victims were Thai. Three Singaporeans and one Canadian are confirmed dead.
And why doesn’t this tragedy surprise us in our capital which is renowned for its nightlife, but where clubs are loosely regulated and often have very poor fire safety systems. Or you never wondered along Ekamai’s quickly and cheaply errected nightclubs and bars “What if?” Reports said the club had only one main exit, at the front, and many people had been trapped inside, unaware of three other exits.
Politicians and officials will be all over Bangkok’s night venues and check every club and pub and bar in town and demand better fire safety for a few days at least. But how can you prevent negligence, carelessness and inattentiveness, the most plausible reasons for the fire. Said a witness: The blaze was caused by a “special-effect” firework on the main stage to usher in the new year:
And the fire made the ceiling, which was made largely of inflammable sound-proof material. And the ceiling caught fire, the fire spread very quickly and you can only imagine the panic of the trapped inside. Firework inside a building … Confirmed a policeman: “It appears that the fire started from the area of the stage where a band was playing. There were some pyrotechnics and it appears that they started the blaze.”
And from a reliable source we got this:
Since a Mr. Suriya Ritrabue is the sole Managing Director with the authority to bind the company with his signature, we have to assume that he bears ultimate responsibility for this tragedy. However, it’s more likely that he’s in Cambodia or Malaysia by now … But he deserves to have his name kept in front of the public until justice is served. (We can’t find an alternate spelling for the name in English so we used the transliteration scheme of the Royal Thai Institute.)
We pulled up the business registration record for Santika:
Business Registration No.: 0105546137109
Name: White and Brothers (2003) Co., Ltd.
Type: Limited Company
Registration Date: 13/11/2546
Status: In Existence
Registered Capital: 2,000,000.00
Address: 235/11 SOI SUKHUMWIT 63 (EKKAMAI) THANON SUKHUMWIT KHLONG TON NUEA KHET WATTHANA BANGKOK 10110
Business Sector: 55202: Restaurants and food and refreshment shops
Managing Directors: Mr. Suriya Ritrabue
Shares by Nationality: Thai 400
The club address matches what is published on the web, double-checked here via the domain name registration:
http://whois.domaintools.com/santikaclub.com
The club had sales of over 150 million baht in the past 4 years so they can probably afford a good lawyer …
Still, according to all the Thai media and the Bangkok Post police planned to charge Visuk Setsawad, a major shareholder of Santika.
But finally all roads lead to Rome. The Post confirmed a few days after the inferno that police will file charges against Suriya Ritrabue.
It’s our guess that the beat reporters in the daily press don’t understand the difference between corporate structure (including shareholders and a Managing Director who may or may not be a shareholder) and day-to-day operations which would have a supervising manager in the club. Doesn’t have to be the same person and often isn’t for an operation the size of Santika.
And a Thai LLC (Limited Liability Company) does typically need seven shareholders at a minimum. Those 7+ would have the right to vote on changes and company by-laws and other things as well as enjoy a dividend in good times; when things go wrong on the other hand they all share responsibility. Limited Liability means just what it says and a company formed on those terms can only be stripped of its assets and reserve capital, no creditor can go after a Director or shareholder’s personal assets as can be done with other types of company (a Sole Proprietorship or Ordinary Partnership, for example).
That kind of “safe harbor” makes them very attractive although they are supposed to pay higher tax rate. In practice that rarely happens though as the Directors typically just vote themselves a raise or bonus, pay the lower personal tax rate, and leave the company with higher administrative expenses, in effect breaking even and owing little or no corporate tax.
The “power to bind the company with his signature” usually has the practical interpretation that such individuals (and a company may have more than one) can sign corporate income statements, tax filings and other government papers, conduct the banking relationships and various other high level stuff. It’s a level above just being able to sign checks or contracts …
Last but not least: Santika had actually planned to close down and move to another place in Bangkok. The name of the tragic concert was Goodbye Santika. The first band’s name? “Burn” … Apparently the owner could not extend the lease on the property:
We still wish you a great and prosperous and successful 2009, while our thoughts are with the victims and their families.
As frequent visitors to Thailand and lovers of the country, the people and of Bangkok, my husband & I are heartsore and sorrowing for the victims of this appalling tragedy. How can the families and friends of those who perished possibly find peace in the bleak landscape of the grief they will be suffering. Our love and compassion go out to each and every one of them.
Lynda Anderson & Michael Johnson, Perth, Austrlia
Does anyone remember a few years ago when a few people came out and said that a high number of buildings in Bangkok didn’t pass code and were in danger of collapsing? Caused an uproar for a few days and then … nothing. You’d think tragedies like this would open some eyes, but it seems likely that even a tragedy on this scale will be unable to change things. Let’s wait six months and see how many places have clearly marked exits.
There are clubs in London, New York and many places worldwide that are death traps waiting to happen.
A heart felt sorry to all those that lost friends and loved ones R.I.P.
From THE NATION, the Deputy Commissioner-General Police Lt-General Jongrak Juthanon states “most of those killed in the Santika Pub fire were foreigners. They were tourists from Nepal, Austria and Japan.”
While this statement is clearly not true, (Santika was mainly a hi-so Thai club), and he made this statement before the bodies were even counted and identified (most of the names that have been published so far are Thai names), the question is Why would he make such a ridiculous statement? (Nepal, Austria, Japan!)
Is he assuming that foreigners are somehow bad, especially when they go out at night, even to hi-end non-hooker niteclubs like Santika, and somehow create the circumstances of their own karmic death?
Or does the emerging identification of so many hi-so Thai kids as having died as a result of the lack of exits, lack of unbarred windows, lack of building code enforcement, presence of pyrotechnics without precautions and the handing out of sparklers to everybody at the club to light up at midnight lie behind this statement and point of view …
Can anybody explain why the Bangkok Post puts the blame on the, as they call it, “red shirts”:
http://www.bangkokpost.net/topstories/topstories.php?id=135674
Dozens die in night club fire
The “red shirts” who support Thaksin Shinawatra and the opposition Puea Thai called for bigger crowds and predicted a peaceful rally by 30,000 people at parliament on Monday. The public has been advised to avoid the area.
The fire at the Santika Club in Soi Ekamai occurred shortly after the joyous midnight countdown, according to Pol Lt Gen Viboon Bangthamai, deputy metropolitan police commander.”
I sent a mail to the webmaster of the BP, but they don’t react, so I suppose this is the way they see the cause: too many people …
If they still might change the page, which I suppose, it still gives (for me) a little insight on the way they seem to blame everything to the “red shirts” and their “irresponsible” behavior.
See a screendump:
http://www.imagebam.com/image/8c8aff22432032
Interesting takes Joop & Chris.
Newspapers on a day like this are even more understaffed, so in the worst of cases let’s assume the link between Santika and the red shirts is a Freudian slip awoken in some hangovered editor’s mind.
The more hi-so the victims are, the greater the chances that at least some kind of justice will prevail. When they’re the victims themselves, Thailand’s rich can become pretty forceful and creative to get “justice.”
The victims seem to be mostly girls and young women, not strong enough to fight their way through.
BangkokDan
Next one I read in The Nation is a fire in a pub in Soi Cowboy. It’s just one more of these crazy little things I notice since living here for quite some years:
“Thais living on the edge”
Easy to notice on various fronts:
- Reckless driving (to quick, no safety distance)
- Sloppy, careless building/constructions
- Lack of health care
- Extreme drinking
- No safety thinking in various fields (do first, think later)
- No double checks in work and life (I can see with my staff, or just check many Thai website, etc.)
This combined with the lack of eduction, the laissez-faire and first-do-then-think attitude combined with corruption and sheer greed, all this combined together gives us this dangerous cocktail of rather dangerous living standards & conditions here in Thailand.
Just check out how many dead we have again on the roads during this New Year’s season (drink until you drop).
Welcome to the darker, edgy side here in the Land of Smiles.
Hope Khun Abhisit can rise the eduction level here a bit. It’s badly needed.
Happy New Year folks!
(I’m not complaining, just analyzing both sides of the coin)
Can someone tell me where I can find the list of names of those that died during the Bangkok fire? I have several friends in Thailand and I am concerned for their well-being.
The news about the Santika Bangkok nightclub fire that killed dozens New Years Eve is terrible, but not surprising. Assuming that it was an accident, it will likely be shown that the cause was a lack of safety standards in the building that was facilitated by a bribe or two. According to the news reports, that is already under investigation by Thai authorities.
In 1975, when my wife and I arrived in Bangkok to begin a three year stint at the American Embassy, we stayed for a few weeks at the New Imperial Hotel around the corner. It was called the New Imperial Hotel because the previous Imperial Hotel had burned down a couple of years previous with great loss of life. The story was still fresh that as the fire raged, hotel owners were having to negotiate a price with the firemen to put out the flames.
A few years later, after we had left Bangkok, the infamous Grace Hotel on Soi Nana burned down again with great loss of life. The hotel had been a notorious pick up place for Thai hookers and their foreign customers.
In a country like Thailand, where corruption is so endemic, safety standards in buildings and roads are often ignored as money passes hands between builders and inspectors. The result has been world-class potholes and tragically, buildings with high occupancy that burn easily. What happened New Years Eve is sometimes the result.
Not having been back to Thailand since 1982, I would have hoped that things had changed since those days. It seems, however, that is not the case.
gary fouse
fousesquawk
Same same the world over, those at the top of the tree profit.
I agree corruption is so endemic in Thailand but hopefully that will change over many years. Ok maybe another 100 at least.
But i still love the place.
[...] Its clientele have been described as "well-heeled" and "affluent". Absolutely Bangkok comments:And why doesn’t this tragedy surprise us in our capital which is renowned for its nightlife, [...]