Osan fire kills woman as blaze started by cockroach spray and lighter

A woman in her 30s died after falling while escaping a fire that broke out early Monday morning in a five-story mixed-use building in Osan, Gyeonggi Province, police said. The woman, a Chinese national who lived on the fifth floor, had handed her two-month-old baby to neighbors and her husband before she fell; she was taken to Ajou University Hospital and pronounced dead several hours after the blaze began.

Osan Police Station said the fire was ignited at about 5:35 a.m. on Oct. 20 by a second-floor resident in her 20s who used an aerosol spray and a lighter in an attempt to kill a cockroach, an action that produced a small flame and quickly set nearby items alight. Firefighters brought the blaze under control in about 40 minutes after flames spread to a bed and piles of trash in the unit, police said. Investigators reported the resident told them she had seen the method online.

Thick smoke from the second-floor fire filled stairwells, preventing the fifth-floor family from using the emergency exit, police said. The couple opened a window to call for help; because the adjacent building stood less than one meter away, neighbors were able to reach from their windows and receive...