The Fire
The cause has been linked to a massive Chinese New Year fireworks display in the compound, authorized by CCTV itself, without the permission or participation from Beijing police, the Beijing Fire Department, Beijing City government, or any other governmental department. CCTV had ignored three consecutive police interventions and warnings and had four television cameras trained on the multi-million yuan fireworks, which consisted of nearly 700 high explosive pyrotechnic devices, reports said.
Six hundred firefighters arrived on the scene to fight the blaze, which lasted five hours and caused one death and seven injuries. Chinese media reported one firefighter – secretary of the fire department's communist party branch – died from smoke inhalation and seven people were injured, six of them firefighters. The Chinese media proclaimed the dead firefighter a "revolutionary martyr"(革命烈士). China Free Press estimated that the fire resulted in more than 4 billion yuan (US$588 million) in damages.
Xinhua reported, and the municipal public security bureau confirmed, that Beijing police detained an official of CCTV. Xu Wei (徐威), in charge of the CCTV construction site, was taken to a police station in eastern Beijing's central business district, suspected of being the organiser of the fireworks display. CCTV later made a public apology:
| “ | The fire caused serious damage to the state property, and CCTV is deeply remorseful. It also brought inconvenience to the people living nearby and caused traffic jams, and CCTV expresses sincere apologies. | ” |
Read more about this topic: Beijing Television Cultural Center Fire
Famous quotes containing the word fire:
“Physical force has no value, where there is nothing else. Snow in snow-banks, fire in volcanoes and solfataras is cheap. The luxury of ice is in tropical countries, and midsummer days. The luxury of fire is, to have a little on our hearth; and of electricity, not the volleys of the charged cloud, but the manageable stream on the battery-wires. So of spirit, or energy; the rests or remains of it in the civil and moral man, are worth all the cannibals in the Pacific.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“We could not well camp higher, for want of fuel; and the trees here seemed so evergreen and sappy, that we almost doubted if they would acknowledge the influence of fire; but fire prevailed at last, and blazed here, too, like a good citizen of the world.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)