BEIJING: A fire at a nursing home in central China left at least 38 people dead, officials said on Tuesday, with bodies burned beyond recognition and wheelchairs reduced to charred frames.

The fire broke out on Monday evening in an apartment building at a privately-owned old people’s home in Pingdingshan, the state news agency Xinhua said.

“The bodies were so badly burned, we couldn’t tell who was who,” Xinhua quoted one victim’s relative as saying.

Pictures posted online showed a thick column of black smoke rising from behind a petrol station near the facility.

Another displayed the blackened frame of a building, with a burnt-out wheelchair in the foreground.

“Only myself and one other roommate managed to get out,” survivor Zhao Yulan, 82, who shared her room with 11 other people, told Xinhua.

The agency said the home had 51 residents and the blaze was extinguished less than an hour after it broke out.

Two of the injured were in critical condition in hospital, the work safety bureau of the central province of Henan said in a statement on its website.

The cause of the fire remained unclear, but a provincial television station quoted another resident as blaming an electrical fault.

Xinhua, citing authorities, reported that 12 staff members had been taken into police custody as part of the investigation into the disaster. Police were also searching for three additional staffers, Xinhua said.

The building was built from steel with flammable foam fillings, the state-run China News Service said Tuesday.

Enforcement of safety standards is often lax in China, with some property and business owners paying off corrupt officials to look the other way. The country’s vast population is ageing rapidly, with 15.5 per cent aged 60 or above by the end of last year, according to official statistics.

Published in Dawn, May 27th, 2015

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