Twenty Dead in Hebei Nursing Home Fire

A fire at a nursing home in Longhua County, northern China’s Hebei province, has claimed the lives of twenty people, according to Beijing’s state news agency Xinhua. The blaze broke out around 9:00 pm (1300 GMT) on Tuesday at the facility, located roughly 180 kilometres (112 miles) northeast of the capital, Beijing. By 3:00 am Wednesday, twenty people had been confirmed dead, Xinhua reported.

“Other elderly people in the nursing home have been transferred to nearby hospitals for further observation and treatment,” the state news agency said. The cause of the blaze is under investigation. An individual responsible for the nursing home has been detained by police, the county government confirmed.

Deadly fires are relatively common in China due to lax building codes and an often slipshod approach to workplace safety. In January, a fire at a vegetable market in Zhangjiakou city, northwest of Beijing, killed eight people and injured 15. A month before that, nine people died in a fire at a construction site in eastern China’s Rongcheng city.