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Originally written at 11pm on 2/9/09: Did you guys hear about this? I just heard about it, its finally showing up in the news online -
The Mandarin Oriental Hotel as part of the CCTV Tower Complex in Beijing caught fire and its engulfed in huge flames - 中央电视台新址附近发生大火:
(photos by Reuters)
44-story hotel in flames. Its not yet open to the public (luckily!)
Fire claims building at CCTV Beijing headquarters
you can see in his pictures that the arch tower is apparently not burning, just the adjacent hotel! (whew!)
UPDATE 1:Another view -
looks pretty trashed! :-O
more news links here:
http://news.google.com.hk/news?hl=en&q=cctv%20tower&um=1&ie=UTF-8&sa=N&tab=wn
I wonder what this means for CCTV and for Beijing? Is it an accident? or is it a suspicious fire caused by criminals? or protesters? terrorists? There's some speculation that its Chinese New Years Fireworks gone-awry? Its obviously too early to speculate! I just hope the causalities from this fire are at a minimum. Its a shame to see such nice, new architecture get damaged.
If there's any silver lining in this disaster, its to show those 9/11-conspiracy theorists that fire + steel reinforced building = bad. (something they don't believe is physically possible).
Update 2: the official word is that its a fireworks related accidental fire. Hmm... were the construction workers playing with fireworks inside of the building? on the roof? (how would it get inside?) Is this a cover-up?
Either way, i think the building shouldn't have burnt this badly if it was built to proper code, don't you think? (I'd have to check, but I think even with buildings under construction they're supposed to put sprinklers and fire surpression systems in before they get much beyond the steel and concrete stage (ie - if it was fully decorated with carpets and furniture and wood, etc it should have working sprinklers). Someone's going to be getting the blame, I'm sure.
Update 3: WOW, if you go to g00gle and type in " CCTV tower on fire" this blog shows up as like the 5th result! (if you search for "CCTV fire" in g00gle HK, it comes out 3rd or 4th!)
ALSO it looks like the Chinese Government has asked news outlets in China to stop posting news that differs from the official reports on the subject. Doh, I guess all my endless speculation without evidence here will violate that request! :-P
Actually to be honest I don't necessarily thing that is an unreasonable request - China has a serious 'internet mob' problem. Trying to stop them from whipping eachother into a frenzy over misinformation is probably a good thing for EVERYONE... if they don't try to stay on top of this, next thing you know there's going to be a crowd of people outside all the Carreforre locations in China burning effigies of Sharon Stone and turning over Japanese cars! :-D
Update 4: Apparently it was CCTV's own fireworks was what started the fire?!?
Update 5: Wow, they arrested as many as 12 people for this. According to Xinhua they were using big fireworks without a permit. No explanation as to why the sprinklers weren't turned on though... CCTV has given an apology but forgot to mention the firefighter who died putting out the fire? Some more details here:
Beijing party that went horribly wrong.
One article mentioned that there were several cameras filming the fireworks display that started the fire. I wonder if any of that video will ever be seen by the public? :-P
Keywords: CCTV Tower Fire, Beijing Fire, Mandarin Oriental Hotel Beijing Fire, CCTV Inferno, CCTV Headquarters Fire, Beijing Suspicious Fire, 9/11 Conspiracy, steel Frame building fire collapse, Edison Chen, Chinese New Years Fireworks Cause Fire, Beijing fire. 中央电视台新址附近发生大火
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