China inspecting bus system after Chengdu Fire
After the deadly bus fire in Chengdu city over the weekend, the Chinese government has ordered inspections of all bus facilities across China.
The bus fire claimed 27 lives and resulted in 76 injuries on June 5th, deaths were blamed on a rear fire door that would not open, and also due to Firefighters being held up in severe traffic. The start of the fire has been blamed on a passenger carrying a can of gasoline on-board which may have leaked, or been deliberately set on fire.
ChinaSmack has photos, videos and Chinese netizen comments, of the event. Be warned, these are rather gruesome. CCT chose not to publish these over the weekend for this very reason.
From the Peoples Daily:
From The Peoples Daily:
Cities across China inspected bus facilities over the weekend after the fatal bus explosive which killed 27 and injures 76 in southwest China’s Sichuan Province on Friday.
More signs about dangerous items will be installed in buses and at bus stops in Chengdu, capital of Sichuan, where the blaze happened, said Hu Qinghan, director of Chengdu Municipal Committee of Communication on late Sunday.
The fixed windows on the buses with air-conditioners will be changed to ordinary windows which can be opened, and more safety hammers to brake windows will be installed, Hu said, adding that the doors also will be much more easy to be opened.
The city will buy 1,000 more buses to ease traffic in rush hours, He said.
In the neighboring Chongqing Municipality, employees will be at major bus stops to inspect dangerous items, said the municipal transport company, which examined its 6,500 buses on Saturday.
Beijing began to examine all its 230,000 buses on Sunday, said the Beijing Bus Group.
Each bus had automatic firefighting equipment which would turn on when a fire started, said the company’s spokesman.
Drivers and conductors had been trained to deal with emergencies before being authorized to work, the spokesman said.
Fuzhou, Eastern China’s Fujian Province, has 2,100 buses, 1,500of which had installed automatic firefighting devices, which cost Fuzhou Public Transport Company Ltd. more than three million yuan since 2006.
The company, which examined all its buses on Saturday, said it will buy more than 300 buses with the automatic devices within this year.
Drivers inspect their buses everyday before they began to work and each bus has to go to the transport company every 10 days for examinations, said Li Rui, general manager of the company.
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It’s a pity that so many must die in order to make progress it this area of safety. And yes, safety is expensive but the litigation to compensate the survivors, and victim’s families is even more expensive.
Also we might ask, How much “right of way” did the firemen get on their way to the scene? In China the bureau of motor vehicle licensing needs to stress the importance of yielding the “right of way” to emergency vehicles, or suffer a stiff penalty fine. It will take time to achieve this “right of way” in a new motoring society.
It is a pity, but practically every country needs a ‘wake up call’ such as this, and although many had to suffer for this mistake, the lives saved in the future will hopefully make their sacrifice worthwhile.
As far as ‘right of way’…does such a word exist in Chinese to describe this foreign concept? I kid of course, but if other, more basic traffic laws, cannot be enforced and practiced then more advanced concepts such as this will have to wait patiently.