Karenluvs6
12-26-2000, 09:53 AM
Please....someone, tell me what is wrong with this picture...?!?
BEIJING (Dec. 26) - A Christmas Day fire killed 309 revellers at a disco party in the Chinese city of Luoyang, Xinhua news agency said on Tuesday.
All the victims were packed into a dimly-lit dance hall on the fourth floor of a department store, Xinhua said. The building had been declared a safety hazard just a week ago, and emergency exits were blocked by boxes of merchandise.
Seven others were injured in one of China's deadliest infernos in recent years, Xinhua said.
Among the dead were 135 males and 174 females, the news agency said. Earlier, Xinhua reported that construction workers had also been killed in the blaze that broke out at 9:35 p.m. on Monday.
Local television news said the fire that began in the basement was caused by "carelessness" in renovation work. It gave no further details.
The popular Dongdu Disco was throwing a special Christmas party. It was dark and music was blaring so many revellers were unaware they were in danger until it was too late.
"When fire broke out, the whole dance hall was suddenly thrown into chaos," said one survivor, a woman surnamed Wang with bloodied hands and a face blackened by smoke.
Wang told the Henan Daily she was at the party with her husband. She escaped by climbing through a window and jumping off a balcony, but was not sure if her husband survived.
Christmas is not an official holiday in China, but many people mark the day meeting friends, exchanging gifts or heading out to restaurants and night spots.
NO SPRINKLER SYSTEMS
Local residents said exits in the low-rise building, a maze of shops and narrow corridors, were blocked. Local media said the building failed a fire safety inspection one week ago.
"We saw smoke coming up though the floor," said a woman surnamed Zhang, a tenant on the first basement level -- one floor above where the fire started.
"We grabbed extinguishers but there was no way to stop the fire," she told Reuters.
Put up in the late 1980s, the glass-fronted building with stone colonnades had foam extinguishers but no sprinkler system or fire and smoke alarms, tenants said. Residents said building managers had promised to improve safety.
The fire department responded quickly, but only one or two trucks could approach the building initially because access was blocked by snack vendors on the streets, witnesses said.
Long ladders plucked some survivors from the upper floors. Six or seven people leapt from windows onto yellow air beds set out by rescue services, witnesses said.
Local television showed smoke billowing from smashed windows as fire fighters trained hoses towards the roof.
The fire was finally extinguished at 12:45 a.m. on Tuesday (1645 GMT Monday), Xinhua said.
An official at the city's Fourth People's Hospital, where many of the injured were taken, said most victims died from smoke inhalation.
The commercial centre is in the old section of Luoyang, an ancient former capital of China located just south of the Yellow River.
WORST FIRE IN YEARS
The fire was one of the deadliest of its kind in China.
The worst was in 1977, when 694 people - 597 of them children - died in Xinjiang.
In December 1994, 323 people, most of them children, were killed in a concert hall fire in the oil town of Karamay in the western region of Xinjiang.
A month earlier, 233 people were killed in a dance hall fire in the northeastern province of Liaoning, many of them crushed to death or asphyxiated inside emergency exits that were chained shut.
In March this year, a fire at an illegal pornographic movie theatre killed 74 in Henan province. Police blamed that blaze on an over-worked quartz heater at the Paradise video parlour in Jiaozuo city.
Reuters 08:17 12-26-00
BEIJING (Dec. 26) - A Christmas Day fire killed 309 revellers at a disco party in the Chinese city of Luoyang, Xinhua news agency said on Tuesday.
All the victims were packed into a dimly-lit dance hall on the fourth floor of a department store, Xinhua said. The building had been declared a safety hazard just a week ago, and emergency exits were blocked by boxes of merchandise.
Seven others were injured in one of China's deadliest infernos in recent years, Xinhua said.
Among the dead were 135 males and 174 females, the news agency said. Earlier, Xinhua reported that construction workers had also been killed in the blaze that broke out at 9:35 p.m. on Monday.
Local television news said the fire that began in the basement was caused by "carelessness" in renovation work. It gave no further details.
The popular Dongdu Disco was throwing a special Christmas party. It was dark and music was blaring so many revellers were unaware they were in danger until it was too late.
"When fire broke out, the whole dance hall was suddenly thrown into chaos," said one survivor, a woman surnamed Wang with bloodied hands and a face blackened by smoke.
Wang told the Henan Daily she was at the party with her husband. She escaped by climbing through a window and jumping off a balcony, but was not sure if her husband survived.
Christmas is not an official holiday in China, but many people mark the day meeting friends, exchanging gifts or heading out to restaurants and night spots.
NO SPRINKLER SYSTEMS
Local residents said exits in the low-rise building, a maze of shops and narrow corridors, were blocked. Local media said the building failed a fire safety inspection one week ago.
"We saw smoke coming up though the floor," said a woman surnamed Zhang, a tenant on the first basement level -- one floor above where the fire started.
"We grabbed extinguishers but there was no way to stop the fire," she told Reuters.
Put up in the late 1980s, the glass-fronted building with stone colonnades had foam extinguishers but no sprinkler system or fire and smoke alarms, tenants said. Residents said building managers had promised to improve safety.
The fire department responded quickly, but only one or two trucks could approach the building initially because access was blocked by snack vendors on the streets, witnesses said.
Long ladders plucked some survivors from the upper floors. Six or seven people leapt from windows onto yellow air beds set out by rescue services, witnesses said.
Local television showed smoke billowing from smashed windows as fire fighters trained hoses towards the roof.
The fire was finally extinguished at 12:45 a.m. on Tuesday (1645 GMT Monday), Xinhua said.
An official at the city's Fourth People's Hospital, where many of the injured were taken, said most victims died from smoke inhalation.
The commercial centre is in the old section of Luoyang, an ancient former capital of China located just south of the Yellow River.
WORST FIRE IN YEARS
The fire was one of the deadliest of its kind in China.
The worst was in 1977, when 694 people - 597 of them children - died in Xinjiang.
In December 1994, 323 people, most of them children, were killed in a concert hall fire in the oil town of Karamay in the western region of Xinjiang.
A month earlier, 233 people were killed in a dance hall fire in the northeastern province of Liaoning, many of them crushed to death or asphyxiated inside emergency exits that were chained shut.
In March this year, a fire at an illegal pornographic movie theatre killed 74 in Henan province. Police blamed that blaze on an over-worked quartz heater at the Paradise video parlour in Jiaozuo city.
Reuters 08:17 12-26-00