China Detains Officials Over Shanghai Fire

SHANGHAI — Prosecutors in Shanghai said on Friday that they had detained three government officials for their role in a high-rise apartment fire here last month that killed 58 people and injured about 70 others.

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The government said the three officials were placed under criminal detention for abuse of power in allowing illegal construction activities to spark a huge fire at a 28-story apartment complex in the central part of Shanghai. It was one of the deadliest fires in Shanghai in decades.
Prosecutors said they detained the director of the Jing An district construction and transportation commission, the head of the commission’s general office and the vice head of the commission’s construction project management office.
The fire in central Shanghai’s Jing An District raged for hours beginning after lunch on Nov. 15 and killed elderly residents and even a 16-month old child. It also created widespread anxiety in Shanghai about the safety of high-rise apartments and the ability of fire officials to control blazes. Hundreds of firefighters fought the blaze but seemed ill equipped because of the size of the fire and the height of the building. The government vowed to upgrade its fire fighting equipment.
After the fire, Shanghai officials apologized for the fire and detained 13 welders and construction company officials. Investigators blamed unregistered welders and a state-owned construction company for touching off the fire by igniting nylon netting and bamboo scaffolding around the 13-year-old building, which was under renovation.
A week after the fire more than 10,000 people gathered at the building site to mourn the victims. Criticism of the fire and fire officials ability to control the blaze was largely censored in the Chinese state-run news media.
The Wall Street Journal reported on its Web site that Shanghai police detained mourners last Sunday as they tried to mark the 35th day after the fire.
And a Singapore newspaper, Lianhe Morning News, said Friday that some of the victims of the fire complained that the government was pressuring them to move back into the building and out of hotels the city had placed them in. The surviving residents of the building that caught fire said the condition and smell of the building made them reluctant to return. One resident also told the newspaper that he refused to accept the government compensation offer of about $145,000.