The factory was poorly designed and built. Fire exits drawn in the building plans were not in fact constructed, and the existing external doors were locked. Furthermore, the building was reinforced with un-insulated steel girders which quickly weakened and collapsed when heated by the flames.
At about 4 PM on May 10th, 1993, a small fire was discovered on the first floor of part of the E-shaped building. Workers, located in the upper floors, were instructed to keep working wherein because they were told the fire was said to be minor. The fire alarm in this building did not sound. This part of the building was dedicated to the storage of finished products and the fire spread quickly. Other parts of the factory were full of raw materials which also burned very fast.
Workers in the first building who tried to escape found the ground floor exit doors locked, and the stairwells soon collapsed. Many workers jumped from the second-, third-, and fourth-floor windows in order to escape the flames, resulting in severe injuries or death. Local security guards attempted unsuccessfully to put out the flames, and a call was made at 4:21 PM to the local Nakhon Pathom fire department.
Firefighters arrived at the factory at about 4:40 PM, to find Building One nearly ready to collapse. The fire spread extremely quickly because of the presence of the combustible plastics and fabrics, and reportedly it took less than an hour (only 53 minutes) for Building One to collapse from the time the local police called the fire brigade until 5:14 PM. [2]
Fire alarms in Buildings Two and Three had sounded and all the workers from these buildings were able to escape, but the flames spread to these buildings as well. However, the fire brigades from Nakhon Pathom and neighboring Bangkok were able to put out these fires before these buildings were destroyed.
Wow.