Quick Take: District Officials Suspended for Negligence After Deadly Fire

Beijing authorities suspended three district officials including a deputy district governor for gross negligence after a fatal fire in an apartment building in the city’s southern Daxing district.

According to the official People’s Daily, Du Zhiyong, deputy head of the Daxing district, and two officials in charge of the Xihongmen township were to blame for incompetent safety oversight in a fire that killed 19 people.

The three officials and 10 other lower-level cadres are under investigation by the municipal’s branch of the Communist Party's disciplinary watchdog.

The fire broke out in the evening of Nov. 18 on the blue-collar edge of the city. Many of the dead and injured were migrant workers from rural areas seeking low cost of living.

In a preliminary probe, the 20,000-square-meter apartment block was found to be illegally built. The fire was caused by faulty electrical wiring in a storage area in the complex’s basement, according to the official Xinhua News Agency.

The fire was a jarring reminder of the city’s safety hazards caused by unlicensed buildings and poorly managed small industrial plants, said Cai Qi, Beijing’s party chief.

The municipal authorities ordered a 40-day crackdown targeting mixed-use facilities with potential fire hazards, according to the Beijing Work Safety Committee, an inter-departmental municipal agency responsible for coordinating work safety enforcement.

Eight suspects in the fire were formally arrested on Wednesday, according to the Daxing district procuratorate.