A Shanghai firefighter shoots water at the Jiaozhou building in Jingan district at 3:30 pm on November 15. The fire started about 2:10 pm. Photo: Cai Xianmin

By Liu Dong

Few readers would have noticed a Shanghai newspaper brief mentioning a fire in a Jingan district snooker club on July 25 that almost engulfed the apartments above. There were no reported casualties or injuries.

District chief Zhang Renliang and a dozen officials arrived at the scene on Shimen No.1 Road 90 minutes after the fire started, barking orders at shopkeepers and watching as firefighters finally succeeded in beating back and dousing the flames.

Twenty families moved back home about 9 that evening, some noticeably shaken by events, according to a staff member of the Nanjing Xilu neighborhood committee who refused to be named.

Officials would meet the owner of the snooker club and building tenants and sort out all issues including compensation, Zhang said. All the residents' issues would be addressed, he said.

"We'll do our best to handle the situation," he told the Global Times reporter, "and prevent similar accidents from happening again."

No further information was ever released. What Zhang said that day might well have been forgotten but for the worst fire in half a century of Shanghai history that struck five months later in the same district: Zhang's district.

City officials had been preparing a victory party to celebrate the completion of the World Expo when 58 people including a Japanese citizen died in the blaze, according to Shanghai government statistics. Seventy-one were recorded as injured, 14 critically and 36 people missing.

Shanghai government refused to disclose a complete list of victims of the five-hour fire even after a private investigation by the activist artist Ai Weiwei identified two more victims on top of the official toll. Death counts are an important and sensitive issue on the Chinese mainland as compensation can be denied victims not on the list.

Liu Yunjie, a 60-year-old retired prosecutor living in Room 1003 on the 10th floor of the Jiaozhou building, called in the fire at 2:10 pm on November 15. His call was "one of the earliest" according to firefighting authorities who later confirmed it had started on Liu's floor.

Liu had knocked on neighbors' doors until it was too late to escape, his neighbors said. When Liu's charred corpse was found in the aisle of the building, it was barely recognizable. His wife Fu Qingxuan, who had been at work when the fire broke out, refused to identify it.

"The fire was not extinguished by firefighters but burned itself out," said a man surnamed Wang from Room 2203, whose wife and mother both died in the fire. He asked the Global Times not to reveal his full name.

"The government has not yet published any official investigation results about why those people died and who should take real responsibility for the fire," said Wang, whose daughter survived.

Firefighters rescue residents from fifth-floor scaffolding at the Jiaozhou building in Jingan district at 3:30 pm on November 15. Some 19th-floor residents even used the scaffolding to climb down to safety. Photo: Cai Xianmin

Exit strategy

Of a total "58 victims," 57 died inside the building and one outside, a fireman told the Oriental Morning Post.

A lack of fire exit knowledge was a key cause of the shameful death toll, the un-named man told the Shang-hai-based newspaper.

"I don't believe that," Wang said, "because I called my wife and she told me she was on her way downstairs.

"At least seven other people got the same kind of call."

His wife and mother were extremely capable medical staff, Wang said, and one of the other victims was a retired soldier who had experience of escaping tricky situations.

"We want to see the pictures taken at the scene by authorities and to know what exactly happened to our family members," he said.

"But so far the authorities have refused all our requests."

Wang himself arrived at the scene about 2:40 pm and witnessed the pitiful disaster efforts until midnight.

"Ineffective firefighting and rescue were the direct causes of so many innocent deaths," he said.

"How could a news crew arrive so much earlier than the firemen? How come their water gun could only reach the fifth floor?

"I have so many questions I want answered and I'm really unsatisfied with the reply."

Wang and 27 other victims' relatives held a private meeting nine days after the blaze at the Jiuyue Hotel, their temporary accommodation after losing their homes.

Together they resolved to refuse all compensation until a full and independent investigation identified which officials should shoulder their share of the blame.

"We won't accept compensation until real accountability for the accident is taken," Wang said.

An official investigation is being conducted by the state-appointed November 15 Relief and Rehabilitation Working Team, about whom little or no information has been released.

Their report will not be released for three months, Wang said he was told.

When the Global Times tried to reach the State Council team stationed at the Xijiao Hotel in Shanghai, a spokesman sur-named Ma said no comment would be made until the final report.

In the meantime, an internal notice sent by the Shanghai Bar Association informed all lawyers who accept a case involving the fire to report to them within 24 hours and focus on preventing possible conflict with the victims, Wang said.

Prosecutors placed three officials in criminal detention on charges of abuse of power on Friday: Gao Jianzhong, director of Jingan District Urban Construction and Communications Commission, construction department section chief Zhou Jianmin and management office deputy director Zhang Quan.

Before that on November 26, 13 construction industry staff including four welders were rounded up and held responsible by Shanghai authorities. Two mid-level bosses of local construction companies were named, photographed and loudly identified by police authorities as the guilty parties, with their role reported extensively by Shanghai and national media.

Victims told the Global Times that so far all those arrested by the Second Branch of People's Procuratorate were "small potatoes."

"It's meaningless for us because what we pursue is a full report with clear results of a transparent investigation into the responsibility of all aspects of the accident," Wang said, "not just the authorities rounding up a few scapegoats as a perfunctory consolation."

Built in 1998, the Jiaozhou residential building was one of three neighboring buildings undergoing special insulation work expected to finish by the end of the year.

Workers had been installing heat-retaining materials on the exterior wall of the building to reduce energy wastage.

One key detail to emerge from media investigations has been that energy consumption counted toward the promotion prospects of officials: a pollutants reduction assessment is cited in the country's 11th Five Year Plan published by the State Council at the end of 2007.

Career opportunities

Local government chiefs would be dismissed if they failed to achieve the target, according to the terms of this assessment.

Energy saving is also a core part of the country's 2005-2010 11th Five Year Plan, aiming to reduce the country's energy consumption by 20 percent per unit of GDP by the end of 2010.

A 15.61 percent reduction had been achieved by the country at the end of last year, according to Jie Zhenghua, deputy director of the National Development and Reform Commission.

"It's not an easy job to get done within the few remaining months," Jie said at the United Nations Climate Change Conference in Tianjin on October 9.

Indeed.

Shanghai municipal government invested 4.6 billion yuan ($692 million) from 2005 to 2010 on energy projects to ensure all new buildings achieved 65 percent savings by the end of the year.

The plan was to shave another 5 percent off energy consumption by the end of this year: The Ministry of Urban- Rural Development published a notice to local government on July 14 stressing all public buildings must slash energy consumption by 5 percent compared with that of last year and that this percentage would count toward the assessment of officials.

The race was on.

Some 30 million square meters of older Shanghai buildings such as Jiaozhou were targeted for renovation to be completed by the year end.

Just as pressure was climaxing on hitting these ambitious energy targets, the six-month Expo called a halt to construction work, leaving a two-month sprint to the finish.

Dozens of buildings in their compound were also receiving identical renovation as Jiaozhou, said an official living in the Tianlin Xincun residential compound in Xuhui district who refused to reveal his name.

After the fire, all work has stopped, he said. In the meantime, residents continue to reside amid scaffolding, deadly chemicals and dangerous construction materials.

"The government's original intention was good, but they never really thought it through," said Wang Wei, chief engineer of the Shanghai Engineering Science Research Institute.

A week before the Jiaozhou disaster, Shanghai fire authorities staged their largest-ever drill. Fire-proofing Bureau Director Chen Fei made a memorable announcement at the press conference on November 9 that Shanghai "certainly had the ability to handle any kind of fire effectively and quickly," including fires on buildings taller than 300 meters.

The 28-story Jiaozhou building is 85 meters high.

One hour, 15 minutes

All reports of the once-highly publicized drill or press conference disappeared online within a day of the deadly fire, including Chen's assurances.

Shanghai blogger Han Han witnessed the whole thing.

"The first siren wasn't heard at the scene until 18 minutes after people noticed smoke and fire spreading out from the building," he wrote.

The first fire hose didn't start until 3:31, one hour and 15 minutes after the fire had started, he alleged on his blog.

Luo Lin, director of the State Administration of Work Safety and head of the State Council investigation team, announced in a special news conference on November 17 that a preparatory probe into the causes of the fire had identified two unlicensed welders as the culprits.

"More importantly," Luo said, "the fundamental reasons behind the fire were the illegal subcontracting of the project and poor management of construction safety."

"It was an accident that was completely avoidable."

State-owned Shanghai Jingan Construction Company subcontracted the Jiaozhou building renovation to Shanghai Jiayi Construction and Decoration Company, according to the Jingan district government official website.

Shanghai Jiayi subcontracted the project a second time to three private companies, according to a migrant workers' representative who worked on the Jiaozhou building and spoke to New Century magazine on condition of anonymity. Private company boss Shen Jianxin hired the unlicensed migrant welders.

A fire engulfed a similar Shanghai Jingan Construction Company energy-saving project at the Shanghai Bailemen Hotel on Nanjing Xilu on July 7.

Flammable materials and disorderly safety management caused the fire, according to local media reports.

Thanks to an early alarm and fast firefighting, no one was hurt.

Founded in 1987, Shanghai Jiayi's total annual income last year was 110 million yuan with net profits of 307,900 yuan that year, according to public information from the Shanghai Administration of Industry and Commerce.

Jiayi was blacklisted as an unsafe and unqualified construction company by the Shanghai municipal government in 2006 and 2008.

The Jingan district government praised Jiayi as a model company in 2006 and 2007.

Jiayi went on to complete 60 Shanghai engineering projects between 2007 and 2010 - mostly for the Jingan district government - according to Jingan District Urban Construction and Communications Commission records.

Cyanide smoke

The polyurethane applied to the exterior wall is not just dangerous because it's flammable, warned Zhu Liping, deputy director of the firefighting department at the Ministry of Public Security, at a press conference on November 17.

"The polyurethane material releases a highly toxic chemical - cyanide - which can easily kill a person if he breathes it," he said.

The day after the fire, the Global Times reporter noted nylon nets and chemicals on the ground in front of the two neighboring buildings.

A week after the fire, all the insulating materials painted on the exterior wall of all three buildings were ordered removed by the municipal government and all the scaffolding was demolished.

All construction work on the three buildings was suspended and the construction materials have now been sealed off for safekeeping.

The building was renovated using substandard materials that failed to meet flame retardant standards for a high-rise building, said Yang Zongkong, a senior consultant of the China Plastics Industry Association.

"The best quality insulating materials on the market cost 3,000 yuan a cubic meter while the cheapest cost 300 yuan," Yang said. "Many people would choose lower-quality materials to make bigger profits."

Compensation for all the destroyed property would be given at market prices, announced Jingan district chief Zhang Renliang at a city press conference on November 23. Each victim's family would receive a total 960,000 yuan: a 310,000 yuan social donation and 650,000yuan one-time compensation based on national law.

"If the unlicensed welders are the ones who pulled the trigger that started the fire," Wang said, "then who supplied the bullets and guns for them?"