School fire kills sixth grader in southern Vietnam

A sixth grader died in a fire that hit an elementary school in Dong Nai Province, southern Vietnam on Thursday, early reports said.

The victim is D.T.T., the 12-year-old daughter of Dang Dinh Dieu and Nguyen Thi Mai, who are a security guard and a janitor working for Phu Dong Elementary School in Bien Hoa City, Dong Nai, respectively.

Mai managed to take her youngest child out and called for help while T. was asleep and stuck inside when the fire broke out at around 7:20 am on Thursday at Dieu and Mai’s house set up inside the school.

It is common for a security guard’s family to live on the premises of a school in Vietnam.

Dieu and many staff members in the school immediately ran to the aid of T. and broke the wall to rescue her, but a large amount of insulation foam in the house hampered their efforts.

The school management board also evacuated all students to the schoolyard.

Firefighters arrived shortly after and put out the blaze at around 8:00 am on the same day, but T. was already dead.

Dieu and Mai’s eldest child, a ninth grader, was at his school at the time of the incident.

Functional forces initially determined that an electrical short was the cause of the conflagration.