Fire at a shoe factory kills 28 in one of China’s deadliest blazes in recent years

Source: THE AS­SO­CI­AT­ED PRESS

A fire broke out at a shoe fac­to­ry in the south­east­ern Chi­nese province of Fu­jian on Thurs­day, killing 28 peo­ple, the of­fi­cial Xin­hua News Agency said.

Chi­nese Pres­i­dent Xi Jin­ping de­mand­ed “an all-out search and res­cue ef­fort,” urg­ing a swift in­ves­ti­ga­tion of the in­ci­dent and “strict­ly hold those re­spon­si­ble ac­count­able.”

The blaze start­ed in a fac­to­ry at Huiteng shoe com­pa­ny in the city of Jin­jiang, the city’s fire de­part­ment said in a state­ment. The cause of the fire was not im­me­di­ate­ly known. Jin­jiang is a ma­jor man­u­fac­tur­ing hub for sports shoes.

There were 237 fac­to­ry work­ers and two vis­i­tors in the build­ing when the fire broke out. Au­thor­i­ties pulled out 213 peo­ple, two of whom were pro­nounced dead af­ter be­ing tak­en to hos­pi­tal. An­oth­er 26 miss­ing peo­ple were lat­er con­firmed dead, ac­cord­ing to the state broad­cast­er CCTV.

Xin­hua said the fac­to­ry’s own­er and oth­ers in charge have been tak­en in­to cus­tody and the com­pa­ny’s ac­counts have been frozen.

Video by CCTV shows the fa­cade of a build­ing of sev­er­al floors charred black and cov­ered in white smoke. Ear­li­er footage shows fires were burn­ing on mul­ti­ple floors and the build­ing shroud­ed in thick, black smoke.

The fire start­ed on the first lev­el of a five-floor con­crete-struc­tured build­ing, where a work­shop and a ware­house were lo­cat­ed. The burn­ing ma­te­ri­als in­clud­ed shoe com­po­nents, which are high­ly flam­ma­ble and helped the fire spread quick­ly, ac­cord­ing to CCTV.

A lo­cal fire de­part­ment of­fi­cial said in an in­ter­view with the state broad­cast­er that sole ma­te­r­i­al piled up in stair­wells made it much hard­er for the fire­fight­ers to reach the flames and put them out.

CCTV al­so said the fire de­part­ment sent 183 peo­ple and 35 ve­hi­cles to the fac­to­ry and that open flames were ex­tin­guished af­ter about four hours. Xin­hua lat­er said more than 500 peo­ple joined the res­cue and search op­er­a­tion.

Work safe­ty has been a per­sis­tent prob­lem in Chi­na. In May, an ex­plo­sion at a fire­works plant in the city of Chang­sha in the cen­tral province of Hu­nan killed at least 37 peo­ple. In 2024, a fire at a re­frig­er­a­tion fa­cil­i­ty un­der con­struc­tion killed 39 peo­ple in the city of Xinyu in the south­east­ern Jiangxi province.

Au­thor­i­ties have re­peat­ed­ly or­dered busi­ness­es to screen for work­place haz­ards. Of­fi­cial da­ta show that 18,261 peo­ple died in near­ly 20,000 work­place ac­ci­dents across the coun­try in 2025, down from the pre­vi­ous year. —BEI­JING (AP)