By DAKE KANG, Associated Press
BEIJING (AP) — A hearth in an apartment constructing in northwestern China’s Xinjiang region killed 10 people and injured nine, authorities said Friday, amid stringent lockdowns which have left many residents in the world stuck of their homes for greater than three months.
The hearth broke out Thursday night within the regional capital of Urumqi, where temperatures have dropped below freezing after dark.
Flames spread upward from the Fifteenth floor to the seventeenth floor, with smoke billowing as much as the twenty first floor, in accordance with multiple state media reports. The blaze took around three hours to extinguish.
The deaths and injuries were attributable to inhalation of toxic fumes, with those taken to the hospital all expected to survive, the reports said. An initial investigation appeared to indicate the hearth was sparked from an influence strip in a bedroom of one in every of the Fifteenth-floor apartments.
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A Uyghur living in exile in Switzerland said he learned from a call with a neighbor that his aunt and 4 of her children perished in the hearth.
“She was a beautiful woman, all the time pondering of her children and find out how to treat and educate them well,” Abdulhafız Muhammed Emin said, sobbing during a phone interview. “My heart is absolutely broken, I cannot bear it.”
Xinjiang has been under harsh lockdowns for over three months to combat the spread of the coronavirus under China’s “zero-COVID” policy. The country has grappled with a wave of cases in recent weeks, causing rolling lockdowns and rigid travel restrictions affecting a whole bunch of thousands and thousands of individuals.
Videos circulated on social media showed an arc of water from a distant fire truck falling wanting the hearth, sparking waves of indignant comments online. Some said fire engines had been blocked by pandemic control barriers or by cars stranded after their owners were put in quarantine, but the explanation why the truck was far-off was unclear.
Many Xinjiang residents are frustrated with China’s harsh COVID-19 controls. In September, some reported hunger amid spotty food deliveries.
Xinjiang “is an open-air prison,” Muhammed Emin said. “The Chinese government doesn’t care about their lives.”
Urumqi Mayor Memtimin Qadir apologized to town’s residents during a news conference late Friday and announced the formation of a government team to research the hearth.
In the course of the news conference, Urumqi authorities said that fireside escape doors weren’t locked and that residents were permitted to go downstairs “for activities” because the community was designated as a “low COVID-19 risk area.”
“Some residents’ ability to rescue themselves was too weak … they usually didn’t escape in time,” said Li Wensheng, head of the Urumqi City Fire Rescue department.
Muhammed Emin disputes that account, citing social media posts saying that many apartment residents were locked of their homes as a consequence of COVID-19 controls. One other post said that residents were permitted downstairs for under a number of hours a day, and weren’t free to come back and go from the constructing. The Associated Press couldn’t independently confirm the claims within the social media posts.
Urumqi has not experienced a significant recent outbreak, with just 977 cases reported Friday, just about all of them asymptomatic. Nevertheless, as in lots of parts of China, local officials petrified of losing their jobs are leaning toward more extreme measures to stop outbreaks inside their jurisdictions.
The tragedy comes days after 38 people died in a fireplace at an industrial trading company in central China attributable to welding sparks that ignited cotton cloth.
4 people have been detained over the hearth Monday in town of Anyang and native authorities ordered sweeping safety inspections to root out potential dangers.
This story corrects the day of the news conference by the Urumqi authorities.
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