Fireworks start Beijing hotel blaze
An Olympic-style fireworks display put on by China's state-run television broadcaster was the cause of a spectacular blaze that destroyed a luxury hotel in Beijing, a fire department spokesman said.
The fire, which sent off huge plumes of black smoke and showered the ground with embers, left one firefighter dead and a handful of others injured, the official Xinhua News Agency said. The blaze was put out after burning for more than five hours.
Luo Yuan, a spokesman for the Beijing fire department, was quoted as saying by Xinhua that fireworks set off to celebrate the Lunar New Year were to blame for the fire that destroyed the unfinished hotel.
He was quoted as saying that China Central Television had hired a fireworks company to ignite several hundred large fireworks in an open area by the nearly completed Mandarin Oriental hotel.
Video footage seen on Youtube shows spectacular bursts of fireworks above the top of the 44-floor building in downtown Beijing.
"It is clear only that the cause was firing fireworks against regulations. The detailed cause is still under investigation," an official in CCTV's foreign affairs department, told The Associated Press.
The 520ft Mandarin Oriental hotel, designed by Netherlands architects Rem Koolhaas and Ole Scheeren, was part of a stunning CCTV complex that helped transform the capital's skyline for last year's Olympics.
The dynamic Z-shaped CCTV tower next to the hotel has quickly become a symbol of a modernising and powerful China even though it was not due to open until later this year.
Luo told a news conference that the people from a company in Hunan province hired to set off the fireworks were being questioned.
Luo said the fireworks were similar to those used during the Beijing Olympics.