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.
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, five of whom died. More than 20
firemen suffered from smoke inhalation. Four were taken to
hospital.
Huang Donghua, from the Shantou Information Office, said the
fire would not have been so bad if staff at the four-story 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 raging by the time the
fire brigade arrived."
Further, decorations put up at the hotel were made of flammable
rather than fireproof material.
Huang added that a lack of faucets 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 their
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.
Huang said they were also gearing up to examine the safety features
of all hotels, restaurants and entertainment facilities in the
city.
Five years ago, another hotel fire in the city killed five
people. All were government officials on business in the city.
In related news, a blaze caused by an explosion detonated by
local geological surveyors and that raged for 10 days has destroyed
1,260 hectares of forest. The fire occurred in Muli Tibetan
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, 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 meters, accounting for
one-tenth of Sichuan's total.
(China Daily June 13, 2005)