High-rises come under fire after fortuitous rescue

Editor's note: The quick thinking of a 19-year-old bucket truck driver in Fushun, Liaoning province, saved the lives of 14 people who would otherwise have been unable to escape an apartment building that was engulfed by flames on May 2. China Daily reporter Li Yang comments:

The fire started in a grocery store on the ground floor of a six-floor apartment building at 6 am. Lan, who happened to be driving by, saw what was happening and used his crane-mounted basket to rescue people trapped on the upper floors.

All the 14 people regard Lan as their savior, saying that were it not for his timely appearance, they would have had to jump, as the corridors were already filled with choking smoke and the fire was quickly climbing upward when they woke up.

While praising the young man's quick thinking, we should also pay heed to what would have happened if Lan had not been passing the building at that moment, and if the building had been too high for the crane arm to reach the floors where the people were trapped.

Statistics indicate that 1,407 people were killed in fires last year, among which fires in residential buildings claimed 1,127 lives.

China has about 350,000 high-rise buildings－those above 24 meters or with more than eight floors－among which more than 6,000 are super high buildings above 100 meters, the highest numbers of both in the world.

It is compulsory for such buildings to have fire alarms and emergency exits and equipment to fight a fire. However, one tragedy after another has proved that these fire prevention and precaution measures are sometimes not enough or do not work as expected due to cost-cutting or lack of routine checks.

Over the past four decades, China's urban resident population has almost doubled, and the population density in cities has increased dramatically, which has increased the fire risks in crowded cities.

Each fire should turn the screws on the fire prevention departments to make sure all compulsory fire control facilities and measures will function as intended in an emergency, particularly those in high-rise buildings.

And the government could learn from Japan where self-rescue training and first aid skills are a part of the national education.