Mon, Feb 16, 2004 page4

• Ninety killed in fires in temple, shopping center

  DISASTERS Twin blazes in China added to a recent string of catastrophes that have come despite pledges by officials to improve the country's safety record

  • AP AND REUTERS
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  A fire swept through a shopping center in northeastern China yesterday, killing 51 people and injuring dozens more, an official and state media reported. Hours later, a fire in a temple in the country's southeast killed 39 people.

  The catastrophes added to a recent string of deadly accidents that have struck China despite promises by the government of President Hu Jintao (胡錦濤) to improve its appalling public safety record.

  The shopping center fire broke out at about 11:20am in the second floor of the five-story building in Jilin, a city about 950km northeast of Beijing, the official Xinhua News Agency reported. It said 71 people were injured.

  The cause was under investigation.

  "It was an especially large fire," said Fang Wanyou, a government spokesman in Jilin, which is in a province of the same name.

  Many of the dead were sales clerks, and firefighters were among the injured, Fang said. He said it wasn't clear why the fire spread so fast.

  Since it was a Sunday, the store was likely crowded with shoppers. Shopping has become a major pastime in China, which is newly flush with consumer goods as economic growth soars.

  The temple fire broke at about 2:15pm in Wufeng, a village in Zhejiang Province, Xinhua said. It said firefighters put out the blaze about 30 minutes later, and the cause was under investigation.

  The report didn't say whether the temple was Buddhist or part of China's indigenous Taoist faith.

  China has suffered a string of accidents in recent weeks that have killed scores of people.

  Less than two weeks ago, 37 people were killed in a stampede in Beijing during a festival celebrating the last night of the Lunar New Year holiday. In December, a gas well blowout in the country's west killed 243 people and left whole villages strewn with bodies.

  Also during the Lunar New Year holiday, a bus crash in the southeast killed 24 people.

  With each new disaster, China's leaders vow tougher measures to ensure public safety.

  Hu, who took power last year in a generational leadership change among China's top Communist brass, says he wants to create a "well-off society" that pays attention to quality of life as well as economic growth.

  Reducing accidents is part of that campaign, but frequent disasters threaten to undermine his promise.

  In Jilin, it took 260 firefighters some four hours to extinguish the blaze, Xinhua said.

  State television showed smoke billowing from the building, with flames visible through its broken windows and its rooftop sign completely charred.

  The building's upper floors housed a bathhouse, a billiard parlor and a disco, Xinhua said, although the fire began in the part of the building that offered shopping.

  Fang said there also were restaurants in the building.

  An official at Jilin's Central Hospital said many of the injured suffered from smoke inhalation or shattered their legs as they hit the ground after leaping.

  "There are many leg injuries because they jumped," he said by telephone. "Today was Sunday, so the mall was packed with weekend shoppers."
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