People evacuate as flaming rubble falls from a 42-story Chinese tower
In Changsha, a city in central China, a skyscraper caught fire on Friday. According to the officials, no injuries have yet been reported.
On social media, a video seemed to show hundreds of people running from the structure as burning rubble dropped from the top stories.
China Telecom’s office is located in a 42-floor skyscraper that was the scene of the fire, according to official broadcaster CCTV.
According to CCTV, “thick smoke billowed from the location, as dozens of storeys burned violently.”
Later, in a social media post, the provincial fire service said that “at this time, the fire has been put out, and we have not yet identified any victims.”
In the first image published by CCTV, orange flames could be seen ripping through the structure in a populated section of the city as black smoke rose into the air.
A subsequent photograph posted on social media claimed to indicate that the fire had died down as rescue workers blasted water jets over the building’s scorched front.
The fire at our No. 2 Communications Tower in Changsha was put out by 4:30 p.m. today, according to a statement posted on social media by China Telecom.
Communications have not been interrupted, and no casualties have yet been found.
The population of Changsha, the provincial capital of Hunan, is over 10 million.
According to CCTV, the 218-meter (715-foot) skyscraper was finished in 2000 and is situated next to a significant ring road.
In China, where inadequate enforcement of building rules and widespread illegal construction may make it impossible for people to escape burning structures, deadly fires are a typical occurrence.
According to official media sources, a warehouse fire in the northeastern province of Jilin resulted in at least 15 fatalities and at least 25 injuries in July of last year.
A martial arts school in northern Henan Province had a fire that killed 18 people—most of them children—the month before, sparking a controversy about fire safety regulations.
Another two dozen people killed in two fires that broke out in Beijing’s migrant neighbourhoods in 2017, while 58 people died in a massive fire that tore through a 28-story housing complex in Shanghai in 2010.
