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Who set fire to the CCTV tower?

By Chen Xia: 0 Comments Print E-mail China.org.cn, March 16, 2010

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But according to the confession Xu Wei later gave in court, he brushed aside the police, saying that it was not his duty to keep the traffic moving, and that he had no way of calling a halt in the middle of the show.

Located near Jingguang Bridge road, a newly-built tower within CCTV complex is ablaze in Beijing on February 9, 2009.

A few minutes later, smoke was seen coming from the top of the tower and, shortly afterwards, flames appeared. The firework company moved the remaining fireworks away from the scene and tried desperately to put out the fire. But it was too late.

When the fire broke out, only a few people were on duty in the tower. They opened up a pump on the 13th floor to feed the sprinkler system and fled the building. But the pump soon stopped working because the fire caused a power failure.

When the firefighters reached the site, they found the tower was too high for their hoses. They went to the 25th floor to open a fire hydrant. But there was no water pressure. A firefighter died inside the building after inhaling toxic gas.

It turned out that as early as in November 2008, the supervisor of the CCTV construction site had issued warnings about the inadequacies of the fire fighting system.

Two months before the fire, the sprinkler system in the tower froze up. The water was drained to avoid a repeat of the problem. In the afternoon before the firework show, workers attempted to repair the system but failed. They were planning to work through the following night to refill the system.

But the building caught fire that very evening.

The fire left one firefighter dead and caused direct economic losses of 163.83 million yuan (US$23.99 million).

So far, 21 people, including Xu Wei, have been charged with causing an accident through the use of dangerous goods.

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