After a blaze at a shoe factory killed 28 people, Chinese leader Xi Jinping raised concerns about repeated deadly workplace accidents.
Underscoring the Chinese leadership’s mounting concern about workplace safety issues, Xi said that “since the beginning of this year, multiple major production safety accidents have occurred,” the official Xinhua News Agency reported.
Quick answers to key questions
The cause of the fire at the Huiteng shoe factory in Jinjiang is not immediately known, but materials such as shoe components, which are highly flammable, contributed to the fire’s rapid spread.
At the time of the fire, there were 237 factory workers and two visitors in the building, resulting in 28 confirmed deaths after the rescue operation.
Xi Jinping raised concerns due to the repeated occurrence of deadly workplace accidents in China, emphasizing the need for stricter safety measures and lessons to be learned from such tragedies.
Following the fire, authorities took the factory’s owner and others in charge into custody, frozen the company’s accounts, and initiated a search and rescue operation involving over 500 personnel.
The local fire department deployed 183 personnel and 35 vehicles to tackle the blaze, managing to extinguish the open flames after about four hours while facing challenges due to smoke and blocked stairways.
“All regions and relevant departments must deeply learn from these lessons” and address problems, he said.
China’s premier, Li Qiang, said officials should “strictly prevent major and serious accidents,” Xinhua added.
While China’s workplaces have gotten safer in recent years, problems persist.
Deadly fire at shoe factory
The fire on Thursday started at a factory at Huiteng shoe company in the city of Jinjiang, the city’s fire department said in a statement. The cause of the fire was not immediately known. Jinjiang is a major manufacturing hub for sports shoes.
The fire started on the first level of a five-floor concrete-structured building, where a workshop and a warehouse were located. The burning materials included shoe components, which are highly flammable and helped the fire spread quickly, according to CCTV.
A local fire department official was quoted as saying in an interview with the state broadcaster that sole material piled up in stairwells made it much harder for the firefighters to reach the flames and put them out.
CCTV also said the fire department sent 183 people and 35 vehicles to the factory and that open flames were extinguished after about four hours. Xinhua later said more than 500 people joined the rescue and search operation.
There were 237 factory workers and two visitors in the building when the fire broke out. Authorities pulled out 213 people, two of whom were pronounced dead after being taken to hospital. Another 26 missing people were later confirmed dead, according to the state broadcaster CCTV.
Xinhua state media reported that the factory’s owner and others in charge have been taken into custody and the company’s accounts have been frozen.
Video by CCTV shows the facade of a building of several floors charred black and covered in white smoke. Earlier footage shows fires were burning on multiple floors and the building shrouded in thick, black smoke.
In May, the nation suffered its deadliest coal mine blast since 2009 when some 82 people died in the northern province of Shanxi — an incident that prompted Xi to call for stronger safety measures. Days later five people died in a mine collapse in Yunnan, in the southwest.
The same month, a blast at a fireworks factory in the central city of Changsha killed at least 37 people.
(With inputs from Bloomberg)
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