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Four students die leaping from blaze at Shanghai school

By Cao Li and Wang Zhenghua (China Daily)
Updated: 2008-11-15 10:20

The distraught relatives of Zhang Yanping, one of the four students who died at the Shanghai Business School, console each other on Friday November 14, 2008. [China Daily]

Another student surnamed Ma, who rooms on the sixth floor, said several people fled to safety after being alerted to the fire by a group of men working outside.

"When we walked out of our room, the smoke was so dense we could hardly see anything," she told China Daily.

A spokesman for the school said yesterday that the two girls who escaped the burning room are receiving counseling, while all other students from the sixth floor have been moved into temporary accommodation at a local hotel.

Shanghai police said on Friday afternoon that the fire was started by an electric water heater.

Such appliances are banned at the Shanghai Business School, and at most Chinese universities.

The spokesman said that in 2005, the school's student affairs office issued a notice via its website warning of the dangers of using electric water heaters.

It cited an incident at Northeastern University in Shenyang, Liaoning province, in which 1,000 students had to be evacuated from their dormitories after a water heater caught fire in a student's bedroom.

Meanwhile, a school in Beijing was also hit by fire on Friday.

The blaze broke out in the dining hall of the Beijing Vocational College of Labor and Social Security at about 8:10 am, police said.

Firefighters were called and the fire was soon brought under control, they said.

No one was hurt in the incident.

The deputy head of the school, who refused to give her name, said the fire was caused by a blockage in a flue.

Police and fire departments provided no further details.

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