A fire at a commercial building in southeastern China killed at least 39 people and left one person in critical condition on Wednesday, local authorities said.
According to Chinese state media and the local government, the fire broke out at around 3:30 p.m. local time in the basement of a building in Xinyu, Jiangxi province, which houses an internet cafe on the first floor and an education center on the second floor. announcement.
A video posted on social media by Communist Party news agency Beijing News showed thick black smoke billowing from the windows.
Other videos posted by social media users on Wednesday, appearing to be from the same building, show people jumping from the upper floors onto mattresses on the ground outside and a boy wearing a backpack climbing down a ladder. Ta. The video could not be immediately confirmed.
The local government said nine people were injured in the fire, eight of whom were in stable condition by the time rescue operations ended at 8:50 p.m.
A man who answered the phone at the Xinyu Fire Department said the cause of the fire was under investigation, but declined to answer further questions.
When contacted by phone, the owner of a restaurant across the street from the building where the fire occurred said he had been delivering food to the basement earlier this week. While there, she saw four or five workers doing what appeared to be renovation work, including welding, she said, without giving her name.
The complex where the fire broke out, called Karakuen, is made up of mostly residential buildings above businesses and is home to about 300 people, according to The Paper, another party-affiliated news outlet. The newspaper cited reports from local authorities that said the facility was an old complex and cars were parked casually. The local government renovated it in October to “improve its appearance.”
In response to the fire, Chinese leader Xi Jinping called it “another recent and serious production safety incident” and issued a warning to officials, according to state media. The report said he instructed them to “relax their guard and overcome the mindset of pushing luck.” .
A fire at a kindergarten and elementary school dormitory in central China’s Henan province on Friday killed 13 people. State television did not identify the victims of the fire, but some state news media reported that they were in the same third-grade class.
In late December, a fire broke out at a shopping mall in Shinyo City, killing two people.
Contributing to the research were Joy Don, Li Yu, chris buckley and Qiao Shiyi.