A dozen people have been detained in connection with a hospital fire in Beijing that has claimed the lives of at least 29 victims, the Chinese authorities said on Wednesday, attributing the blaze to possible negligence after sparks from internal construction ignited flammable paint.
At a news conference on Wednesday, officials said most of the deceased were patients at Changfeng Hospital when the fire erupted around midday Tuesday in the southwestern part of Beijing. A nurse, a medical worker and a relative of a patient also died in the fire. Another 21 people were hospitalized in critical or serious condition.
A woman who lives in an apartment complex near the hospital, overlooking the section where the fire broke out, said that she started hearing people screaming for help around 1 p.m. the day before.
“I looked outside, and the sky was all black,” said the woman, who declined to give her name.
The woman, who spoke on condition of anonymity because she feared attention from the authorities, said she saw three people — two men and a woman — jump from a window on the second highest floor to a ledge protruding from the building, with one crumpling after landing. She showed photos on her phone of a person leaning out of the window.
“They were crawling from the windows, and I was scared they would fall,” she said.”
The fire appeared to be the deadliest in the Chinese capital in more than two decades, after a 2002 fire at an internet cafe in the Haidian university district that killed 25 students and shocked the nation.
In the initial hours after Tuesday’s fire, government censors sought to quell public anger by restricting information on the internet.
Chinese censors typically go on high alert after major tragedies involving public safety, attuned to the risk that grief and anger hold the potential to spur demonstrations of broader dissatisfaction with the Communist Party.
On Wednesday morning, the censors appeared to relax as online conversation about the blaze suddenly soared to the top of trending topics on Chinese social media platforms.
Local officials apologized for the fire and said they would learn from the tragedy.
“We feel deeply responsible and guilty,” said Li Zongrong, a deputy district mayor of Beijing’s Fengtai district, the area where the hospital is. “I would like to express our deep condolences to the victims, sincere greetings to the families of the victims, the injured and their relatives, and apologies to the people of the city.”
Yin Li, the highest ranking Communist Party official for Beijing, visited the hospital and vowed that the authorities would pursue those who were culpable for the fire, according to the Beijing Daily, the city’s official newspaper.
A Beijing public security official said the authorities had detained 12 people, including the hospital’s director and deputy director, as well as the head of the construction company overseeing the work at the hospital. They were being investigated for possible violations of safety management regulations that resulted in a major incident with serious casualties, the official said.
A preliminary inquiry found that the fire started from a construction project in the hospital’s inpatient department, a fire official said.
Officials said the hospital’s east building, where the fire broke out, mainly treats critically ill patients. Nearby residents shared pictures and videos on Chinese social media platforms, such as Weibo, that showed how the fire engulfed the hospital, making it difficult for patients who were on the upper floors to evacuate.
The average age of the hospital patients who died in the fire was 71.
Like other medical facilities in China, the Beijing Changfeng Hospital suffered greatly during the pandemic as a result of the country’s restrictive “zero Covid” policies, which limited the number of patients it could accommodate. Built in 1993 with about 150 beds, the hospital was temporarily shuttered at times during the last few years, according to Chinese newsmagazine Caixin.
The Beijing hospital is the flagship facility of a medical care group with branches across China. The publicly traded parent company, also named Beijing Changfeng Hospital, incurred significant losses during the pandemic. It lost a combined 66 million yuan, or about $9.5 million, in 2020 and 2021, and an additional $4.6 million in the first half of 2022.
The 29 deaths put this blaze just below the threshold reserved for fires considered the most serious — killing more than 30 people or causing 100 million yuan, or $13 million, in damage. Investigations of such fires must be led by the State Council, or China’s cabinet.
The last disaster to receive that designation was a factory fire in Anyang, a city in Henan Province, that killed 38 people in November, but such blazes have been increasingly rare, a sign of the country’s progress in implementing tougher fire regulations.
After the fire on Tuesday in Beijing, public safety officials across China conducted impromptu inspections of hospitals and elder-care facilities late into the night to ensure that evacuation routes were not obstructed, according to local media reports.
Beijing held a meeting with officials from across the city on Wednesday to carry out “comprehensive large-scale inspection and rectification of hidden dangers” in the capital.
On Chinese social media, people questioned whether the government could have done more to prevent the tragedy.
“Hospitals are full of sick, wounded, and weak people, shouldn’t they pay more attention to the safety of their surroundings?” said one comment on Weibo. “What should family members do?”
The neighborhood around the hospital was calm on Wednesday evening. Older residents were walking dogs and parents were watching children on tricycles.
A young couple said that police had been stationed nearby all day.
The hospital’s eastern section was mostly dark, except for a few illuminated windows on the top floor. Dark stains blanketed the outer wall of the easternmost part of the complex.
The western section was illuminated, and people could be seen in the windows. The hospital is still caring for patients but is not receiving new ones, a guard outside it said.
Around 8:30 p.m., at least two police cars were parked nearby, and eight uniformed police officers were standing by the hospital entrance.
Li You contributed research.
