According to China News Weekly’s WeChat WeChat official account news, at about 14 o’clock on August 22nd, the external wall of Xintiandi Building in Nankai District, Tianjin caught fire. Fire can be seen from the top of the podium to the top of the building on the east side of the building.
Subsequently, the emergency and fire departments in Tianjin quickly rushed to the scene and devoted themselves to fire fighting and evacuation. At 15: 00 that day, the fire was basically controlled.
According to China fire official Weibo, the tianjin fire Rescue Corps organized several search and rescue teams to enter the burning Xintiandi Building to carry out personnel search and rescue.
At 17: 00 on the same day, China Newsweek saw at the scene that the open flame of the external wall insulation layer of Xintiandi Building had been completely extinguished, and the cause of the fire was under further investigation. No casualties have been reported so far.
"On the last day of work, the unit caught fire."
According to public information, Tianjin Xintiandi Building, located at No.345 Nanjing Road, Nankai District, Tianjin, is located near Haiguang Temple subway station and was completed in 2009.
CCTV news reports that the Xintiandi Building on fire is an office building with 27 floors above ground and 2 floors underground. At present, the open flame of the external insulation layer of the building has been extinguished. Fire and rescue personnel have organized six internal search and rescue teams to enter the building for evacuation and search and rescue.
China Newsweek saw at the scene that there were still more than a dozen fire engines of various types at the scene. Including high-pressure spray vehicles, emergency rescue vehicles, water tankers, compressed air foam vehicles, light tower, decontamination vehicles, etc. Near the 20th floor of the external wall of Xintiandi Building, there are still firefighters working through the ladder. The glass and metal fragments produced by the combustion were sputtered to a radius of 200 meters outside the building.
Metal fragments near the scene/photo by Chen Weijing
Outside Xintiandi Mansion, Mr. Liu told China Newsweek that at about 14 o’clock, he was having dinner in Mr. Li’s beef noodle shop at the bottom of Xintiandi Mansion, when someone suddenly shouted fire, Mr. Liu hurried out of the restaurant.
"You can see that the fire is burning from the bottom up. When I looked up, it had burned to half of the building. After about 4-5 minutes, it burned to the top. With the burning, a large number of splashed fragments are everywhere. " Mr Liu told China Newsweek.
Because his tricycle was still parked at the door of the noodle restaurant, after the fire was put out, Mr. Liu repeatedly tried to enter the scene to retrieve the vehicle, but was dissuaded by the firefighters working on the spot.
Mr. Zhao worked in a well-known enterprise in Xintiandi Building. August 22nd was his last day in the company. When the fire broke out, he was going through the resignation formalities in the company. "At around 14: 30, before the resignation procedure was completed, I saw the smoke on the outer wall and everyone began to run out." Mr Zhao told China Newsweek.
Mr. Zhao’s company is at the top of Block A of Xintiandi Building. When he and his colleagues tried to escape through the stairs of Block A, they found that the smoke was already all over the stairwell. In the end, Mr. Zhao opened two doors connecting Block A and Block B in succession, and then escaped through the stairwell of Block B..
China Newsweek learned at the scene that there are many well-known local restaurants on the 1st-3rd floors of Xintiandi Building, and more guests come to dine on weekdays. The 4th-26th floors cover many enterprises, including beauty salons, education and training, construction engineering, sports culture, financial investment and other fields.
The building property denied that the fire was caused by the hotel gas explosion.
At the scene, some people told China Newsweek that when the fire broke out, they saw two people wearing chef’s clothes running out of the podium of the building. After running out, he said that the fire broke out because of the gas explosion in his restaurant.
Some businesses and people near the scene told China Newsweek that they did hear the explosion, but they could not confirm whether the explosion was the cause of the fire.
In this regard, the property owner of Tianjin Xintiandi Building, a field staff member of Tianjin Haust Property Management Development Co., Ltd. denied this statement to China Newsweek.
The staff speculated that the cause of the fire was that a fire source was thrown at the top of the fourth floor of the podium and ignited the top of the fourth floor. The office of the property is located on the 5th floor of the building, and the people in the building were evacuated immediately after the incident. However, it said that it is not clear from which floor the fire source was thrown. The speculation may be that some high-rise enterprises are renovating, and sparks flying out of the window lead to fire. The specific reasons have to wait for official investigation and notification.
According to Tianyancha App, Tianjin Haosite Property Management Development Co., Ltd. was established in May 2007, and its legal representative is Wang Jinglai, with a registered capital of 21 million RMB. Its business scope includes property management, real estate management, intelligent building management information consultation, etc. Jiang Shaoyong, Wang Jinglai, Tianjin iResearch Conference Consulting Service Co., Ltd. and others jointly hold shares.
The risk information shows that the company has many historical records of administrative punishment. In August 2022, the company provided comprehensive property services as the property of a company, and was punished by the Licheng District Fire Rescue Brigade of Jinan City because the fire-fighting facilities, equipment and fire safety signs were not kept intact and effective. In August 2021, the company was fined 5,000 yuan by the Nankai District Health and Health Committee of Tianjin for failing to change the ashtray in the no-smoking area within the time limit; In June 2018, the company was fined 5,000 yuan by Feidong County Public Security Fire Brigade for failing to keep the fire facilities in good condition and effective.
Xintiandi Building with Fire/Photo by Chen Weijing
"stack effect" caused the fire to develop rapidly.
On the evening of August 22, professional building inspectors arrived at the scene and said that according to preliminary observation, some floors in Xintiandi Building were deformed, and how to deal with them in the next step needs further investigation and planning. The building will be closed for at least 3 days to assess the damage.
The employees working in Xintiandi Building and the surrounding people all told China Newsweek that the fire developed rapidly on the afternoon of August 22nd, and it reached the top of the building from the 3rd floor to the 4th floor in about 5 minutes.
The fire is developing rapidly/video screenshot of Yangguang. com
Regarding the reasons for the rapid development of the fire, Founder, a professor at the School of Civil and Civil Engineering of Wuhan University, told China Newsweek that it is normal for high-rise buildings to develop rapidly after a fire.
"In the north of China, some materials are often used to make the insulation layer on the exterior wall of buildings. According to the corresponding standards, the material of the insulation layer on the exterior wall should have certain flame retardancy, but even if it is completely made of flame retardant materials, it cannot completely prevent the occurrence of combustion, and it will still burn at high temperature." Founder said.
High-rise buildings have a strong "stack effect", and stack effect refers to the phenomenon that indoor air rises or falls along a space with a vertical slope, resulting in enhanced convection of air, which is a manifestation of heat exchange.
The reason why stack effect can aggravate the fire violently is that the hot air caused by the fire at the lower level can flow upward through the fire escape channel because of its low density, so that the hot gas can accumulate at the top of the channel continuously and at a high speed.
Founder said that the fire in Xintiandi Building in Tianjin was similar to the fire in China Telecom Building in Changsha, Hunan Province last September, which spread rapidly in a short time, but fortunately no casualties were caused.
Original title: A building in Tianjin caught fire, and the property denied that the fire was caused by a gas explosion.
Editor: Yang Yanlin
Editor: Liao Yi
Audit: Feng Fei