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Death toll in hotel blaze blamed on slow response
By Zhan Lisheng, Huang Zhiling (China Daily)
Updated: 2005-06-13 05:50
A body found over the weekend brought the death toll of a hotel blaze in
Shantou, Guangdong Province, to 31; another 21 people were seriously injured in
the fire.
The cause is not yet known.
Firefighters were not called to the scene for 35 minutes.
Huang Donghua, from the Shantou Information Office, said the fire would not
have been so bad if staff at the four-storey hotel had known how to inform
guests and the fire brigade of the blaze.
He said: "An initial investigation showed that passers-by, not hotel staff,
reported the fire and it was fierce before the fire brigade arrived."
The hotel had also used flammable materials for decoration, instead of
fireproof ones.
Huang added that a lack of plugs at the hotel for hosepipes made it more
difficult to get the fire under control.
And he said a lack of knowledge about escape routes was also a reason for the
high number of casualties.
A local newspaper said most of the victims were women working as hostesses in
the hotel's karaoke rooms.
Their fake personal information will make identifying bodies more difficult.
Police are still trying to track down the owner of the hotel who fled after
the fire, one of the province's most serious accidents in the past decade.
The disaster broke out at 11:40 am on Friday at the Shantou Huanan Hotel in
the city's Chaonan District.
However, the local fire brigade did not receive news of the disaster until
12:15. It took firemen more than two hours to extinguish the blaze.
Sixty-seven people were rescued, of whom five died.
More than 20 firemen were affected by smoke. Four were taken to hospital.
The authorities were doing all they could to speed up identification of the
bodies.
Huang said they were also gearing up to examine all hotels, restaurants and
entertainment facilities in the city for safety features.
The direct cause of the accident and economic losses have not yet been
released.
Five years ago there was another hotel fire in the city, which killed five.
All were government officials on business in the city.
In another development, a 10-day blaze caused by an explosion detonated by
local geological surveyors has destroyed 1,260 hectares of forest. The fire
occurred in Muli Tibet Autonomous County in Liangshan Yi Autonomous Prefecture
in Southwest China's Sichuan Province. No casualties were reported.
Six-hundred firefighters are to remain at the scene until Thursday if it does
not rain, according to the provincial forest fire control office.
The fire broke out on June 1. A special team, headed by Du Yongsheng,
director of the fire control office under the State Forestry Administration,
reached Muli on June 7 to direct firefighting and rescue operations.
Thanks to the team and more than 2,600 firefighters, the fire was finally put
out after 10 days.
According to the provincial forest fire control office, the exact losses are
not yet known.
It was the third forest fire in Muli since May 17. The previous two fires
destroyed 1,440 hectares of forest in the county, Sichuan's largest forested
area.
According to Li Hongwei, Party secretary of Muli, the county has 850,000
hectares of forest, 790,000 of which are virgin forests. Its wood reserve is 105
million cubic metres, accounting for one-10th of Sichuan's total.
(China Daily 06/13/2005 page3)
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