An Executive Digest of the Industry: Welders Detained in Deadly Shanghai High-Rise Fire

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Welders Detained in Deadly Shanghai High-Rise Fire

by Lauren Frayer, aolnews.com, 11.16.2010

Chinese police have detained four unlicensed welders accused of accidentally igniting a massive fire that spread across scaffolding affixed to a Shanghai skyscraper, killing 53 people.

The 28-story residential building, housing mostly retired teachers and their families, was undergoing renovations to make it more energy-efficient when the fire broke out around lunchtime on Monday, China's Xinhua news agency reported. Two construction companies had covered the building in scaffolding made of flammable nylon netting and bamboo, which ignited quickly, the agency reported.

China Photos / Getty Images

Police in China have detained four unlicensed welders accused of igniting the blaze that killed 53 people in a residential Shanghai skyscraper on Monday.

"The fire became so big because the scaffolding contained a great amount of flammable materials,"CNN quoted Zhu Zhixiang, a Shanghai firefighting official, as telling China's state broadcaster CCTV. "Heavy wind at the time was another factor."

Four suspects have been detained for suspicion of "unlicensed welding carried out contrary to rules," Reuters quoted other state media as saying.

Amid growing public anger, Chinese officials appeared to be making an effort to act swiftly to assign blame for the blaze, which took several hours to extinguish.

"It is hard to believe the government now. The drills on TV are successful, but when a fire truly happens, it's just useless. We feel helpless," a woman who gave only her surname, Liu, told The Associated Press. She said her mother lived on the ninth floor of the building and died Monday in the fire.

We feel that the fire rescue measures and methods weren't fast enough, and secondly they weren't vigorous enough," Du Deyuan, a 66-year-old resident who said he lived on the 26th floor but wasn't home when the fire broke out, told Reuters.

More than 100 residents were rescued from the burning building, but 53 others died inside -- including some whom helicopters were unable to reach on the skyscraper's roof because of heavy smoke. At least 70 others were hospitalized, including 17 in critical condition, the Shanghai city government said in a statement on its website.

Shanghai, a city of about 20 million, has seen a construction boom in recent years, and unlicensed buildings and contractors' work are common.

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Shanghai tower goes ablaze in this shanghai fire or high rise fire. Procore dealer for web based construction software is ProTech, selling construction cloudware and web based construction project management software. China fire did not result in a building collapse.

Posted by ProTech at 11/16/2010 3:05 PM