Hotel is located across street from Kyoto Station, had more than 1,000 guests inside when fire started.

When traveling in Kyoto, getting up early is definitely recommended. The most popular tourism attractions, the city’s historical temples and shrines, are less crowded in the morning, plus they often close around dusk, so you’ll want to get an early start if you’re looking to fit several into your day’s itinerary. Add in the fact that Kyoto’s nightlife options are fairly modest, and most people would say early to bed, early to rise is the best plan.

However, it’s unlikely that travelers appreciated the unexpected wakeup they got in the wee hours of Monday morning when they were informed they had to evacuate their hotel, located just across the street from Kyoto Station, because a fire had broken out in one of the guestrooms.

▼ Images from the evacuation

Over 1,000 guests were inside the Miyako Hotel Kyoto Hachijo when the fire started inside a second-floor room that two Chinese travelers had booked. As the hotel was evacuated, a hotel employee called for emergency fire services and firefighters were dispatched to put out the fire.

It’s unclear if the two women who had booked the room were inside it when the fire started, but the cause appears to have been a mobile battery, as after the flames had been extinguished firefighters discovered a burnt battery atop a charred desk in the room.

▼ The hotel is a four-minute walk from the south-side entrance to Kyoto Station, which is very convenient (provided there’s no fire you need to pass by on the way).

Thankfully, none of the guests or staff suffered injuries, but things could have gone very badly if the fire hadn’t been noticed and extinguished as quickly as it was. Though it’s a modern hotel and ostensibly compliant with all fire codes, evacuating a 10-story-tall building is no easy task, especially when a lot of the evacuees most likely had just been roused out of a deep sleep.

▼ The hotel

With electronic devices becoming an increasingly integrated part of people’s travel styles, it’s become a matter of course for many people to travel with mobile batteries and top them up in their hotel room. However, this year we’ve also been seeing an increase in the number of mobile battery fires, such as the one that shut down Tokyo’s busiest train line or another battery fire that occurred in a hotel in Hokkaido. Japanese airlines, including JAL and ANA, have also put stricter rules in place for how mobile batteries can be used/stored while onboard aircraft.

As a reminder, the phone number to call for emergency fire services in Japan is 119, and if you need to directly inform the staff at a hotel, train station, or anywhere else, the Japanese word for “fire” is “kaji.” And if you are traveling with a mobile battery, make sure to keep an eye on it, since they’re right up there with bears among this year’s enhanced travel dangers.

Source: Sankei News via Itai News, Mainichi Shimbun
Top image: Pakutaso
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