China Fire Victims' Relatives Protest

Relatives of the 309 people killed in a shopping mall fire marched in an angry protest Thursday against callous treatment by officials. Meanwhile, police arrested four welders for causing the fire.

More than 200 people, some tearful and visibly agitated, marched down a main street and blocked an intersection in Luoyang for 45 minutes. They demanded that officials meet with them and criticized what they called cold, bureaucratic measures to identify the dead from the Christmas night fire.

"Give the victims of 12-25 justice," said a banner of white cloth with black felt pen characters that was held aloft by canes of sugar. Another 200 people looked on from the sidelines, and dozens of uniformed police kept watch but did not interfere.

Their anger flared even as news emerged that police had detained 12 people, among them four welders suspected of causing the fire in the Dongdu Commercial Building in the old city section of Luoyang, one of China's ancient capitals.

The four were welding steel beams in the Dongdu's sub-basement Monday night when, police allege, hot materials or sparks fell on flannel rags and wooden furniture, state media reported. After unsuccessfully trying to douse the flames with water, the four fled the building without warning others, the reports said.

"This accident was caused by illegal welding done counter to regulations," China Central Television quoted Yang Zhijie, a national safety expert, as saying.

Accounts of the numbers detained Wednesday varied. Local newspapers and officials put the total at 10. But the government's authoritative news agency, Xinhua, gave the figure as 12, and state television reported that all had been formally arrested.

Among the detained were six managers and employees of Dennis Co., a Taiwan-funded supermarket chain that ran the Dongdu, the Luoyang Evening News reported, citing the deputy police chief for Henan province.

In the wake of the blaze, the government has worried about public anger at rampant disregard for public safety and an officialdom seen as corrupt or indifferent. Top leaders have spoken out demanding those responsible for the blaze be punished.

President Jiang Zemin expressed "extreme concern" and called for a speedy investigation, Xinhua reported Thursday. He ordered local officials to "do a good job in dealing with the aftermath of the fire."

Three days after the fire, police kept sealed the main streets around the Dongdu - a four-story building the size of an aircraft hangar. On its facade of white tile and broken windows hung a sign for a now scotched supermarket opening this week: "Service with satisfaction."

Most of the fire's victims suffocated on a fourth-floor disco holding a Christmas party. The basement fire spread to the first floor, and smoke clogged stairwells, trapping the partygoers and construction workers working elsewhere in the building. The disco reportedly lacked a license and adequae emergency exits.

Some 200 people in the Dongdu Commercial Building did get out, the Luoyang Daily said. But in a sign of the deadliness of the blaze - and the inadequacy of the building's safety measures - only seven people were hospitalized.

More than 280 bodies have been identified so far, the Luoyang Evening News reported. To help identify the dead, the city government opened a second makeshift office in a hotel for relatives seeking word on family members missing in the fire.

Outside one office, relatives' anger boiled over Thursday afternoon in protest. They complained about government rules allowing only one family member into the morgue to identify the body and requiring the dead, once identified, to be cremated within three days.

"It's not about the money. It's about the way officials have done things and their attitudes," said a leader of the march, who refused to give his name, but said his brother died in the fire.

Marchers left the intersection and then 60 or so gathered outside the closed gates leading to the city government office compound.

With the New Year's and, in late January, the Lunar New Year's holidays approaching, the Public Security Ministry on Tuesday ordered officials throughout China to shut down unlicensed and unsafe dance halls and to check hotels, shopping malls and other public venues.

After the Dongdu fire, investigators turned up a catalog of safety violations, lax management and inadequate supervision. The building reportedly was declared one of the province's 40 most dangerous buildings three years ago.

The building failed 18 safety checks in the last two years, the Southern Daily reported Thursday on its Web site. It added that just four days before the fire, on Dec. 21, the Luoyang fire department asked the city to temporarily close the building until improvements were made.

The construction workers welding in the basement were also operating without a proper permit, the Luoyang newspapers said.