Shanghai Fire

On Monday November 15^th, a devastating fire broke out in Shanghai and almost destroyed  the entire 28-story building. I didn’t realize it was a serious issue until I saw pictures and blog entries that my Chinese friends shared on renren.com—a Chinese version of facebook. So far the fire has caused fifty eight deaths. This happened only half a month after the successful closing of Shanghai World Expo, the theme of which is “Better city, better life”.

From the pictures, it can be inferred that the fire was extremely destructive. The entire building looks decrepit and dark right now. The building is an apartment for retired teachers and so many of the residents are old and vulnerable. One of the pictures that strikes me the most is one in which some old women tried to climb off the building from the exterior tubes and pipes. They could not simply stay in their home and wait for rescue. They needed to escape themselves. Ways of self-rescue, however, were limited. I don’t know which floor those women lived on and I can’t imagine whether or not they managed to safely land on the ground in the end. The description online says the person who took the photo couldn’t see the old women any more after some bursts of fume and blaze. Although I’m somewhat reserved about the credibility of the photo description, I pray for them, and for all the victims.

The initial investigation result of the disaster reported:

“Sparks from the welding torches of four unlicensed workers apparently ignited flammable nylon webbing and bamboo scaffolding that sheathed the building as it was undergoing renovations, rapidly engulfing it in flames. “

–Nytimes

These unlicensed workers are detained. But netizens express their concern that the four workers are just scapegoats because there may have been corruption involved in the bidding of the construction project in the first place. Thus, those “middlemen” and government officials involved are those to be blamed. Some netizens also claim that the country only cares about economic development and always ignores public welfare. The country should not expand economic construction at the cost of losing its people’s lives.  Many people claim that the news coverage of the fire issue is limited, but I find plenty of resources online in writing this article in terms of number of victims, investigation process, etc. But if one wants to delve into the true background of the disaster, ie. bidding process of the construction project, corruption involved, etc., I believe he/she will never be satisfied with the resources online. And I agree with what my teammate Onome Uwhuba discussed in her own article Foresight: Cholera Epidemic: if the media outlets reported every outbreak in the world, news would be very depressing indeed.  I would say something similar that if the media reported every detail on the fire night and day, the recent news would be very depressing .

(You can search wikipedia for 2010 Shanghai Fire for more information.)

Sources:

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/17/world/asia/17shanghai.html

Picture credits to news.ifeng.com

Lu Yang

Team 5: International Health

Northampton, MA

Smith College Sophomore

1. 

   Karina L says:

   November 27, 2010 at 11:36 pm

   Very tragic, especially more so that it was entirely preventable

   reply

Leave a Reply

Click here to cancel reply.

Name (required)

Mail (will not be published) (required)

Website

CAPTCHA Code

Spam protection by WP Captcha-Free