An 85-year-old woman died in a fire in her home in Taipei City in the early hours of Wednesday, but her 91-year-old husband and a migrant domestic worker survived the blaze.
At about 2 am on December 12, a fire broke out in the living room of the apartment where a Taiwanese couple and their migrant worker lived on the fourth floor of a residential building on Section 3 Xinglong Road of Wenshan District of Taipei City, the China Times reported.
The worker climbed out the bedroom window and waited on the exterior wall, where she was later rescued by officers who guided her down using the ladder of the fire engine.
The elderly man was found on the staircase suffering from smoke inhalation. However, his wife was found unconscious, not breathing and she had no pulse. She was rushed to hospital where she was pronounced dead.
It took about 30 minutes to put out the fire and 10 other families in the neighborhood had to be evacuated.
The domestic worker told police that while she was sleeping with the elderly woman in the same bedroom, she was woken by the husband, who went to the living room and lit a candle in the middle of the night as the electricity was cut between 12 am and 6 am.
The cause of the fire will be investigated by Taipei City authorities.