12 People Including Director Of Changfeng Hospital Beijing Detained By Police After Fire Incident

Illustration of building fires. (Unsplash-Issy Bailey)

JAKARTA - A total of 12 people have been detained by police for questioning after a hospital fire in Beijing. This initiative killed at least 29 people and the majority were patients. A fire at Changfeng Hospital occurred at around 13.00 local time, Tuesday, April 18. Angry and concerned relatives rushed to the hospital a few hours later after reading reports from local news. "Seven or eight hours have passed and I didn't even take a call," a relative told China Youth Daily quoted via bbc, Wednesday, April 19. Many say they spend quite a lot of time trying to find loved ones. Those who were rescued have now been transferred to other hospitals for treatment. Speaking at a press conference today, officials said preliminary investigations showed that sparks generated during renovation work had ignited paint stored at the site. Among those detained were the director and deputy director of the hospital, as well as the head of the firm who oversees renovation work. Footage on social media showed patients jumping out of windows to escape as thick smoke billowing out of the building. A drone talking about urging trapped patients to remain calm and waiting to be rescued. Some were seen balancing the external air conditioning unit as they waited to be rescued. Local media reported that firefighters evacuated about 70 people and extinguished the fire within an hour of arrival. But relatives of those treated in Changfeng were furious with hospital management. They said even eight hours later, hospital officials could not name the names of those injured or dead "Just say whether the patient is alive or dead," a relative told local media. "How can that person just disappear? Neither the nurse nor the doctor pick up their phone. My elderly relatives don't have a phone call for him." Reports show that most of the patients in the hospital are elderly, and some have undergone amputation surgery, which makes them less moved. Chinese social media users have also criticized the lack of reporting on the incident throughout Tuesday. Witnesses' reports began to appear in the afternoon, but many of these posts were deleted, according to FreeWeibo, a platform that monitors content on the Weibo microblogging site that has been censored or deleted.

"What was surprising was not only the loss of life, but also the terrible silence from the media who only watched the incident. The official announcement we read ignored the extraordinary sadness caused by the disaster," wrote one Weibo user. "The media is used to serve the supervisory role, to show social illness. But what about today? What is the media today?"