China has ordered an investigation into a Beijing hospital fire that killed 21 people, one of the deadliest in the capital in recent years, but removed several social media posts on the incident as people questioned the delay in announcing the news.
Social media showed dramatic videos of people using tied sheets to climb walls to escape the smoke and flames after the fire broke out at around 1pm (0500 GMT) on Tuesday. Changfeng Hospital,
Seventy-one people were evacuated during the rescue. The Beijing Daily reported that as of 6 p.m. 21 people had died.
According to local reports, the fire was doused in about half an hour.
The Beijing government announced that it would hold a press conference on the fire at 12 noon on Wednesday. Local media had reported that the investigation was ongoing.
The authorities barred entry to the hospital on Wednesday. According to Reuters witnesses, broken and burnt windows could be seen and there was a heavy police presence at the site of the hospital, including plain-clothes police.
Post of fire is spreading on social media WeChat According to an investigation by Reuters, several were either censored or removed for hours. One post, still available, criticized the hospital for boasting about fire preparedness in a February article on its official WeChat account.
“The rescue work at the scene was finished in 3.5 hours, but the public only learned that 21 people had died in the fire at 8 pm,” one person wrote in a post on WeChat.
“It is puzzling that before official notification there was little information about a fire in a large, densely populated city like Beijing, which killed 21 people,” the comment said.
According to state and local media reports, the cause of the fire is under investigation, and no further details about the injured were available.
Social media showed dramatic videos of people using tied sheets to climb walls to escape the smoke and flames after the fire broke out at around 1pm (0500 GMT) on Tuesday. Changfeng Hospital,
Seventy-one people were evacuated during the rescue. The Beijing Daily reported that as of 6 p.m. 21 people had died.
According to local reports, the fire was doused in about half an hour.
The Beijing government announced that it would hold a press conference on the fire at 12 noon on Wednesday. Local media had reported that the investigation was ongoing.
The authorities barred entry to the hospital on Wednesday. According to Reuters witnesses, broken and burnt windows could be seen and there was a heavy police presence at the site of the hospital, including plain-clothes police.
Post of fire is spreading on social media WeChat According to an investigation by Reuters, several were either censored or removed for hours. One post, still available, criticized the hospital for boasting about fire preparedness in a February article on its official WeChat account.
“The rescue work at the scene was finished in 3.5 hours, but the public only learned that 21 people had died in the fire at 8 pm,” one person wrote in a post on WeChat.
“It is puzzling that before official notification there was little information about a fire in a large, densely populated city like Beijing, which killed 21 people,” the comment said.
According to state and local media reports, the cause of the fire is under investigation, and no further details about the injured were available.