Welding Torch Blamed in Fire at Chinese Disco

Chinese investigators believe that sparks from a welding torch ignited a Christmas night blaze in a shopping center that killed 309 people, most of them revelers in a disco, the official New China News Agency said today.

Four welders who fled without raising the alarm were arrested, the agency said.

Eight other people who gave false testimony about the incident in the central city of Luoyang were also held Wednesday, it added.

The news agency quoted an investigation team as saying the welders, employed illegally by a Taiwanese investor in the commercial center, were working in a basement level of the six-story building when sparks dropped onto furniture and cotton flannel.

The welders “failed to put out the fire with water and fled the scene without reporting the fire,” the news agency said.

“On Wednesday morning, the four were seized by police and confessed to their violation of law,” it said.

Faced with mounting public outrage, Chinese Premier Zhu Rongji on Wednesday vowed “severe punishment” for those responsible.

As grieving relatives identified the remains of their loved ones, public anger focused on the woeful state of China’s building safety highlighted by the tragedy.

Emotion was fed by gruesome eyewitness accounts of mass suffocation in the dimly lighted dance hall, which lacked emergency exits, smoke detectors and water sprinklers--and had failed a safety inspection just days earlier.

Too terrified to plunge through smashed windows onto air mattresses below, most party-goers perished in the billowing smoke.

Only a handful of people plucked up the courage to jump.

Television pictures showed the dance floor strewn with clothing, upturned tables and chairs, all remarkably unscathed by fire, confirming reports that victims were asphyxiated in a sudden panic.

The news agency said that the building had been warned about inadequate firefighting systems since 1997 and that the privately run disco was operating illegally after its license was revoked.

The dead consisted of 135 males and 174 females. Some media reports said women had been given free admission to the party. Six injured people remained hospitalized.

With lunar new year celebrations coming up next month, the Ministry of Public Security issued an urgent notice ordering all discos and dance halls without a license or fire control systems to be shut immediately.

Fearing public wrath could spin out of control, authorities sought to limit news coverage of the Luoyang tragedy. Local media organizations were told they may only publish news issued by the New China News Agency, according to local reporters.