BEIJING (AFP) — Twenty-one people were killed when a high-rise building caught fire in eastern China, although the death toll could have been much higher with more than 100 others rescued, officials said Wednesday.
The blaze in the 28-storey building in bustling Wenzhou city lasted for three hours, with well over 200 people in the complex when the fire broke out, an official with the local government, Mei Shangyin, told AFP.
He said that 21 people had been confirmed killed with two others seriously injured, a toll confirmed by the state-run Xinhua news agency.
The fire broke out at 8:00 am (0400 GMT), Mei said, a busy time for residents of the building, which had both commercial and residential users.
Firefighters rescued 105 people who were trapped by smoke, while at least another 100 were evacuated in line with emergency procedures, the local government said in a statement.
"I was trapped for two hours, and later I was rescued from the sixth floor by firemen -- the smoke was very thick inside," the China News Service quoted a young woman surnamed Yang as saying.
A mother who was in a state of shock told the agency that her child was stuck and fainted in a lift on the 21st floor when the building was filled with smoke.
She screamed on the balcony until they were saved by rescuers, she said.
Xinhua reported the number of casualties was not expected to rise.
"All the people trapped in the building have been saved," Xinhua quoted a fire brigade official as saying.
The fire engulfed an area of more than 1,270 square metres (13,665 square feet) and more than 270 firefighters were mobilised to put out the blaze, the government statement said.
Pictures on state media websites showed the lower part of the building shrouded in thick smoke.
The cause of the fire is under investigation, the official statement said.
The blaze started in a flower shop on the first floor of the apartment complex and rapidly spread to an entertainment venue on the second floor, it added.
Two people in the flower shop were killed by flames while 19 in the entertainment venue died of suffocation, it said.
Massive fires regularly happen across the country due to a general lack of awareness of fire and safety measures.
In 2000, 311 people died in a disco fire in the central city of Luoyang.
In October, a fire at a shoe factory in Fujian province killed 37 people.
Government data showed that 898 people were killed and 488 injured in the first half of this year in more than 95,000 fires, not including forest blazes or those happening in mines.
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