Fire Alarm

Firefighters in the city of Shenzhen, Guangdong Province, reacted quickly to the blaze, which started at 2:46 pm. Sending 16 fire trucks and 80 firefighters, the blaze was extinguished by 6 pm. There were no other casualties.　

Soon after the fire, Shenzhen emergency management bureau ordered updates and repairs to the building’s fire safety system.　

The tragedy yet again triggered public concern about fire risks in high rises. Wang Wei, senior commander of the Office of the National Fire and Rescue Administration said at a press conference in September 2024 that in the first eight months of the year, 36,000 highrise fires had killed 203 people. Highrise fires accounted for 5.4 percent of total fires, but caused 15 percent of total deaths from fire during the period.　

Sun Xuan, director of the Fire Institute, China Academy of Building Research, warned that fire risks associated with high-rise residential buildings are still not adequately recognized, though there is a much greater fire risk inherent to high-density buildings due to more use of electrical equipment and gas.

“In the past few decades, high-rise and super-high residential buildings have become a major category of new buildings,” Li Xiaojiang, former director of the China Academy of Urban Planning & Design, told NewsChina.　

Data from Xu Chuansheng, a member of the China Fire Protection Association and a national expert on fire safety, showed that at the end of 2023, there were 1.15 million high-rise buildings in China, the most in the world. This includes 130,000 buildings for public use, like hotels, department stores, offices and government buildings, as well as 1.02 million residential buildings. Data from the Council on Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat based in Chicago showed that by August 2024, China was home to 3,194 high-rise buildings of a height between 150 and 300 meters and 120 buildings of a height above 300 meters, the most in the world.　

Fire risks are mounting with the growth in the number of high-rise buildings.　

In the first nine months of 2024, there were 38,750 high-rise fires nationwide, surpassing the total of 23,633 fires recorded in 2023, Wang Tianrui, deputy director of the Fire Supervision Department at the National Fire and Rescue Administration, said at the 2nd Meeting of Architecture Fire Control held in Shandong Province in October 2024.　

Xu, who served as a firefighter for 27 years, said that high-rise fires are characterized by difficulties in rescuing victims, fast spread and multiple ignition points.　

“Due to the large size and height of high-rise buildings, the number of residents and the complicated inner structure, it’s very hard to put out a high-rise fire and save people quickly,” he said.　

Although regulations require residential buildings above 33 meters to be equipped with a fire safety elevator, firefighters still mostly climb the stairs, given the uncertainties in the fire and concerns over poor maintenance of fire safety facilities.　

“Climbing up a high rise is time-consuming. If a lot of people are trapped and the smoke is heavy, respirators won’t work for too long, so rescuers have to take breaks,” Xu added.　

External rescue is equally difficult. Most aerial ladder trucks only reach to between 30-50 meters. Where they can safely operate depends on other factors such as ease of parking, whether structures such as underground parking lots can bear the weight of a fire truck, water supply and wind speeds. In the Shenzhen fire, a ladder truck with a lift of 101 meters attended. These can elevate to around 35 stories high, currently the tallest operational aerial ladder trucks in the world. A fire truck like this costs 24 million yuan (US$3.4m).　

Xu warned that vertical shafts such as elevators and utility ducts speed up the spread of smoke and flames, causing a “chimney effect” which makes fires more destructive and rescues even harder.　

On February 23, 2024, a high-rise residential building caught fire in Nanjing, capital of Jiangsu Province. It spread quickly from the first floor through vertical shafts, killing 15 and injuring 44 others. The fire was likely caused by exploding e-bike batteries.

China has very low requirements for installing fire alarms and water sprinklers, Sun said. Only residential buildings above 100 meters must have them, while for buildings below this height, installation is just recommended.　

“Some building developers ensure they only build up to 98 or 99 meters to avoid the compulsory regulation... So I’m much more worried about fire safety in residential buildings below 100 meters,” a fire safety expert, who asked for anonymity, told NewsChina.　

There are usually no gas leak alarms either, according to experts. Zhang Wanmin, a retired firefighter and a fire investigator at the MoEM, told NewsChina that gas leak blazes are more deadly due to the release of toxic gases and the risk of explosions, which can also compromise a building’s fire safety facilities.　

“These gas facility standards for fire safety are far too low,” Zhang said.　

At the Architecture Fire Control meeting, Wang Tianrui said that foreign countries have very strict fire safety standards, including for family dwellings, while China lacks equivalent rules.　

“That’s because we didn’t previously pay enough attention to fire safety,” Sun said.

Li Sicheng, dean of the Fire Control School, China People’s Police University, told NewsChina that many fire safety facilities are not maintained, and are therefore useless for fighting fires.　

“The fire safety facilities in some high-rise residential buildings are basically not fit for use,” Huang Anyong, director of the Real Estate Management Institute at Southeast University in Nanjing, Jiangsu Province, told NewsChina.　

According to Li, besides fire stations, community police bureaus are also responsible for disseminating fire safety information, as well as community management organizations and power suppliers.　

The main problem is the lack of experienced personnel to conduct fire safety spot checks. As residential units come lower on the list than public buildings, they are unlikely to be chosen for checks.　

“Non-professional agencies like community commissions and community police bureaus generally don’t get much professional training in fire safety... and even when they do spot checks [on residential buildings], it’s probably only a box-ticking exercise,” Li said. “It seems everyone is managing fire safety, but no one does it very well,” he added.　

Experts believe that building managers, who collect fees from residents to maintain public areas and grounds, should take more responsibility for fire safety. This should include ensuring all fire safety equipment is in working order, educating residents on fire safety, and ensuring there are safe evacuation routes.　

But since there are no national rules to compel property managers to ensure fire safety standards and practices, most do not bother much.　

“Property managers have a lot of work to do, plus fire safety systems aren’t often used, so it’s hard for them to discover if there are problems,” Huang said. “Their work focuses more on things like sanitation, landscaping and elevator maintenance,” he added.　

Even if building managers promote fire safety, many residents ignore it, for example, continuing to bring e-bikes and batteries inside buildings to recharge them, although this is a major cause of fires.　

The Nanjing fire was caused by a battery igniting among improperly parked e-bikes at the base of the building, despite property managers enforcing parking regulations for two years. Before the fire, many residents reported the problem to community authorities, but nothing was done as there is still no clarity on who should be responsible for ensuring the rules are followed. Property managers can only ask residents to follow the rules, but have no power to act against those who flout them.　

Huang pointed out who pays for fire safety is an obstacle too, because there is no regulation that lays out who should pay to maintain and manage fire safety facilities – the residents, building management or wider community authorities.　

“For older residential buildings, the public repair fund [paid into by residents] is far from enough to cover fire safety facilities, and it’s hard to ask residents to pay for it all by themselves,” Huang said, suggesting that property management companies prioritize fire safety equipment over vanity projects like beautifying public areas when using public maintenance funds.　

“Fire risks caused by unmaintained facilities get worse as buildings age, and this could prove a heavy burden for everyone in society,” Xu said.

“Besides observing the fire and danger spots, drones can be equipped with fire-extinguishing equipment to douse a fire from above. They can also drop rescue equipment to trapped people, such as gas masks, fire-resistant blankets and ropes,” Zhang Wanmin told NewsChina.

　

A few provinces are already using drones. Henan Province has listed them as a new technology to be promoted in fire rescue, and Guangdong established the province’s first drone fire rescue unit in Dongguan City in November 2024. On January 15, the MoEM said at a press conference that they will speed up the establishment of aerial rescue teams and the use of drones to fight fires.　

Yet Zhang warned that drone use is limited now.　

“The whole country only has 20 sets of this equipment and operating them is very difficult. Since few firefighters have received training and the operation is not covered by specialist insurance yet, not many fire bureaus are risking using drones,” Zhang said.　

“Although China is leading the world in aerial fire rescue, drone rescue, as a new technology, is still in its preliminary phase,” he added.　

Most experts agree the most pressing task is to improve building design and safety standards. For example, sprinklers, fire alarms and gas alarms should be mandatory, as well as better evacuation routes. Inspections of fire safety facilities and building materials, should be further improved and tightened, Sun said.　

In the long term, experts said the safest and simplest way is to limit the height of residential buildings. In 2021, China’s Ministry of Housing and Urban-Rural Development issued a new regulation that limits the height of new residential buildings to under 80 meters, and developers of new public buildings over 100 meters must first consult with local fire departments to ensure it is able to operate safely in buildings of that height.　

But Li Xiaojiang believes 80 meters is still too high for a residential building. “I believe the standard will keep being revised as time goes on,” he said.