Kandawgyi Palace Hotel

The Kandawgyi Palace Hotel, built in 1934, started out as a two-story, red-brick building to house the Rangoon Rowing Club. It was a regular retreat for British officers who occupied British Burma at the time. It was then used by the Japanese as a welfare department during their occupation during World War II. After the war and when Burma had gained independence, the property became the National Biological Museum in 1948. The site first began operating as a hotel in 1979, when the Ministry of Hotels and Tourism took over. The hotel featured 10 bungalows made of teak. They were eventually replaced in 1993 by a larger lakeside building resembling traditional Southeast Asian architecture.[1] The hotel was bought out by the Htoo Group of Companies, which was founded by Tay Za, a controversial Burmese tycoon who was closely linked to the country's former head of state, Than Shwe.[2]

At 3:15 in the morning of Thursday, 19 October, 2017, a devastating fire broke out. The cause was believed to have been an electrical fault. The fire was fed by gas canisters that burst from the boiler room. Eighty fire trucks were brought in to try to control the blaze,[3] but the teak building was gutted. The hotel had 96 occupied rooms with a total of 141 guests. One man perished, a firefighter was treated for smoke inhalation, and a guest was treated after jumping from one of the hotel's upper windows.[4]