It is the deadliest fire since 2002 in the Chinese capital. An investigation is underway on Wednesday April 19 the day after a fire at Changfeng Hospital, located in western Beijing, in the Fentgai district, which killed at least 29 people. A new rising toll, communicated Wednesday by Li Zongrong, deputy mayor of the district, during a press conference, where he offered his “sincere condolences” to the families of the victims.
The municipal police announced on Wednesday the arrest of twelve people, including the director of the hospital and employees of the company in charge of renovation work in the building.
On Wednesday morning, a large police presence was visible around the establishment, the agents trying to dissuade groups of passers-by from observing and filming the scene with their phones, noted journalists from Agence France-Presse. The main entrance to the building appeared intact from the outside, but images of the interior published by business media Caixin showed fully charred beds and blackened walls. On one facade, you could see windows and walls browned with soot, as well as a broken pane.
Number of injured unknown
The alert at the start of the fire was given Tuesday shortly before 1 p.m. local time (3 a.m. in Paris). The latter could be extinguished half an hour later, while rescuers evacuated 71 patients within two hours, according to the Beijing Daily.
A previous report released Wednesday morning mentioned 21 dead. No details have yet been given on the condition or the number of injured in the fire. “The priority is to treat the injured,” said Yin Li, Communist Party secretary in Beijing, who visited the scene, according to the newspaper.
He recommended “establishing a task force at the municipal level”, including to “quickly identify the cause of the accident and hold accountable those responsible, in accordance with the law”.
Several families of patients said they had lost contact with their loved ones, those missing being mainly elderly people who had difficulty moving around, the Beijing Youth Daily, another official Beijing newspaper, reported on Wednesday.
Online censorship of images of the fire and its consequences
Images of people seeking protection from the flames by sitting on outdoor air conditioning units, or clinging to sheets before jumping from the building that houses the hospital were shared on social media on Tuesday. But as of Wednesday, on the Chinese social network Weibo, Internet users complained about the online censorship quickly applied to images of the fire and its consequences.
Fatal fires are quite common in China, due to poor safety standards and the corruption of officials responsible for enforcing them. But they are relatively rare in Beijing. It is the deadliest in the capital since the one that occurred in an Internet cafe in June 2002, which killed 25 students.
In November 2022, 10 people were killed in a fire at a residential building in Urumqi, the regional capital of Xinjiang, in northwest China, sparking popular anger over anti-Covid health restrictions. 19, accused of having interfered with the work of the relief workers. In the same month, 38 people also died in a factory fire in Anyang, in the center of the country, with authorities accusing employees of mishandling.
