China's shoddy fire safety standards were under the microscope yesterday as blocked fire escapes, barred lower-level windows and illegal structures were blamed for turning a shopping center into a death trap.
An illegally built boiler room on the ground floor of the four-story Zhongbai Commercial Plaza in northeastern China was at the center of investigations of a huge blaze that killed 53 people and injured over 70 Sunday.
Government officials also said blocked fire escapes, barred windows and a lack of building safety codes gave terrified shoppers little chance of escape once the inferno started raging.
"From the initial investigation we can see from this accident that has killed 53 people that there are some glaring problems and faults with the fire safety work in Jilin province," Jilin governor Hong Hu was quoted by the government mouthpiece People's Daily as saying.
"In some enterprises fire safety work is unregulated, fire hazards are many and the blocking of fire exits common," he said. "This seriously hampers the ability of people to escape a fire as well as the carrying out of rescue work."
Shoppers and customers at the building's upper floor bath house and dance hall either died from jumping out of windows or of smoke inhalation after they found that the stairways and fire escapes were either blocked or filled with smoke.
The fire was one of two devastating fires that swept through China Sunday, with the other disaster at an illegally built bamboo temple in an eastern Zhejiang province village which killed 40 women and injured three.
Both tragedies highlight the lack of safety standards and fire inspections in China, issues that have previously had disastrous consequences in other parts of the country.
According to local press reports, the Zhongbai Commercial Plaza blaze was ignited in an illegally built ground floor boiler room at the rear of the building which belonged to the third floor bath house.
Flames from the boiler apparently ignited products in three adjoining -- and illegally built -- department store storage rooms before engulfing the rest of the building, the Shanghai Morning Post said.
The illegally built structures also blocked fire trucks from nearing the hottest part of the blaze and left firemen with no alternative but to attack the inferno from the front of the building, the report said.
Workers and managers of the building are under investigation for negligence.
In the second fire in Zhejiang, police have arrested Chen Jianliang, who allegedly built the makeshift temple and organized a "cult-like superstitious activity" that occurred when the fire broke out, Xinhua news agency said.
Forty women aged from 40 to 84 perished when the thatched shed collapsed, with the fire likely started from burning candles or incense, officials have said.
Several fatal fires in China in recent years have been being blamed on poor fire safety standards.
In one of the worst tragedies in recent history, 309 people were killed in a disco fire in central Luoyang city on Christmas night 2000, many of whom were trapped by locked exits.
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