Welders held after 53 die in Chinese high-rise blaze

Unlicensed welders were detained by police in China today after a blaze engulfed a high-rise apartment building under renovation in Shanghai, killing 53 people and injuring more than 70 others.

A preliminary investigation showed that the four men improperly operated their welding equipment, sparking the blaze in China’s business capital, state television and media websites reported.

Witnesses and building residents quoted earlier by state media said the fire began when building materials caught alight. The flames then spread quickly to scaffolding covering the 29-storey building, which houses a number of retired teachers as well as other families.

Apart from the death toll of 53, the city government said more than 70 other people had been rushed to hospital.

While some survivors were housed overnight in the gym of a nearby retirement home, others searched for missing family members.

Some residents escaped by climbing down scaffolding which had been put up for the renovations.

The fire was one of China’s worst in recent years, and disasters of this scale are rare in Shanghai, a wealthy city which is one of the country’s best-run urban centres.

Frustration grew today among relatives seeking answers to how such a tragedy could happen in Shanghai.

“It is hard to believe the government now. The drills on TV are successful, but when a fire truly happens, it’s just useless. We feel helpless,” said a woman who gave only her surname, Liu. She said her mother lived on the ninth floor of the building and died in the fire.

“There must be something illegal in the construction materials, though we don’t know. I am waiting for the government’s explanation,” she said.

At one temporary facility for residents of the building, a middle-aged man was shouting that he was being stopped from going to a funeral home to identify his wife.

“I couldn’t sleep last night, and have been waiting hours and hours. Why don’t they tell me the truth, why don’t they let me go?” said the man, who refused to give his name.

The fire dominated Shanghai’s skyline before it was put out after more than four hours, with black smoke billowing through the sky. The government said more than 100 fire trucks battled the blaze.

Survivors were taken to nine Shanghai hospitals, where there were sad scenes as relatives searched for their loved ones. At Jing’an hospital, the father of Wang Yinxing, a 30-year-old woman who lived on the 22nd floor, searched a list of survivors but could not find his daughter’s name.

“She called her husband and said ’It’s on fire! I have escaped from the 22nd floor to the 24th floor’, but then the phone got cut off,” the father, Wang Zhiliang, 65, said with tears in his eyes. “That was the last we heard from her.”

An unidentified woman told Shanghai television her only option was to climb down the scaffolding. “If I jumped I would die, if I stayed (in the building) I would die,” she said.

Public Security Minister Meng Jianzhu, China’s top policeman, called for an investigation into the cause of the fire.

He said anyone responsible for the blaze would be punished.

Shanghai Fire Chief Chen Fei told a news conference that the fire started at about the 10th floor, and then spread quickly because the scaffolding was made of bamboo and was covered with flammable nylon nets.

“That made the fire quickly spread in vertical directions and nearby areas, forming a large-scale fire in a very short time,” he said.

He defended his crews, saying it took a long time to put out a high-rise fire in any country.

The official Xinhua News Agency quoted local residents as saying the building was constructed in the 1990s and housed mainly teachers from several schools in Jing’an District, many of them retirees.

Shanghai, a city of 20 million and the venue of the recently concluded World Expo, has witnessed a construction frenzy in recent years, ranging from high-rises which dot its skyline to new subway lines, highways and airport upgrades. But unsafe building work remains a chronic problem in China.

Last year, a nearly finished 13-storey apartment building in Shanghai collapsed, killing one worker.

Investigations showed that excavated dirt piled next to the building may have caused the collapse.