Three people have been detained and are being interrogated by local public security departments in connection with the fire which killed 14 children early Tuesday morning in a kindergarten in Nanchang, Jiangxi Province, official sources said.
One of the four children who escaped from the fire died in hospital later that afternoon, according to Xinhua News Agency.
The three people detained are Ni Yongchen, who is in charge of daily operation of the kindergarten, Wu Zhiying, a child-care worker on duty when the fire occurred, and Yang Huizhen, the teacher in charge of the class the victims were from.
The fire broke out 15 minutes after midnight in the children’s dormitory of the Jiangxi Radio and TV Arts Kindergarten, where 17 children aged three to four were sleeping. Seven boys and six girls died in the fire, and four children in the same dorm escaped.
The child-care worker on duty is suspected of playing mahjong, but she has denied this, saying that she had left the dormitory to wash clothes when the fire broke out.
The director of the kindergarten had promised the children’s parents that child-care workers in the kindergarten would be on duty round the clock, including in the children’s dormitory.
However, when the fire broke out, there were no teachers or child-care workers in the dorm at all, official sources noted.
The direct cause for the blaze was that some of the children’s bedding had dropped onto burning mosquito coil in the aisle between beds and caught on fire. Three mosquito coils were lit and placed in the dorm by Yang Huizhen, who was in charge of the class.
The investigating team has excluded the possibility that the fire was intentionally set.
(China Daily 06/07/2001)
