A fire broke out on the 15th floor of an apartment building in Urumqi on Thursday evening. The department said on its official account on Weibo that it later rose to destroy the two floors above.
State media reported that the fire was caused by a power strip that caught fire in a bedroom. The fire was put out about three hours later. The people who died and were taken to the hospital had breathing problems.
The fire caused a lot of questions on Chinese social media about whether Covid restrictions had hampered the rescue or prevented residents from escaping. The region of 25 million people has been locked down for more than 100 days as a result of the Covid outbreak. In some cases, the lock downs have left residents in dire straits, with difficulty securing food and other necessities.
The area where the fire occurred was a low-risk management area that allowed residents to leave their compounds if they wanted to.
Many internet users in China were skeptical of the account. According to the conversations they shared, the compound had recently been placed under a stricter level of lock down, which may have made it harder for residents to get to safety.
Video footage of attempts to put out the fire appeared to be evidence that a lock down had stopped the effort. The footage showed pressurized water from a fire hose spraying just out of reach of the burning building, suggesting that fire trucks may not have been able to get closer to the building because the community had been sealed off.
The accounts could not be verified right away. Uyghurs, a mostly Muslim ethnic group, have been the focus of a government campaign in the region. Many Uyghur residents face reprisals for speaking with the foreign media.
The descriptions of residents possibly sealed into their homes or compounds fit a larger pattern of how such lock downs have been enforced in many parts of the country. Barriers and bolted doors are used to keep people who may have been exposed to the virus from leaving their rooms.
Reached by phone on Friday, an officer at a nearby police station said they had no comment. Other neighborhood workers didn't want to speak.
The Uyghur activists outside China said the tragedy pointed to the failure of the authorities to protect the residents.
According to a Uyghur academic based in Washington, D.C., people are not allowed to go outside easily. I am frustrated that the government is handling it poorly. They have shown that they don't care about the Uyghur people. In a country like China with all its facilities and equipment, how is the fire department able to control this in three hours?
Chinese internet users shared articles with titles such as "Last night's fire in Urumqi is the nightmare of all of Xinjiang's people" They called for a moment of silence to express their deepest sympathies to the people who died in the Urumqi fire. Families who lost their homes in the fire were given apartments by some residents.
Questions about the cost of China's zero-tolerance approach to fighting Covid are posing a challenge for China's leader. In the past two weeks there have been protests by thousands of workers in the southern city of Guangzhou and in the central city of Zhengzhou at Apple's largest iPhone factory.
Though still low by global standards, China has been grappling with a rise in Covid outbreak, with cases around the country surging to record highs. A total of 32,700 cases were recorded on Friday.
The Urumqi fire was one of two major tragedies this week. In one of the worst fires in several years, 38 people were killed in a fire at an industrial equipment manufacturer in central China.
Cai Weida is a lawyer and expert on fire safety in China. The Fire Department's response to the fire was slow. A lack of space for fire trucks to maneuver was one of the reasons for the delays.
Chris Buckley reported.
All Rights Reserved © 2024
