Search for cause of Shanghai stampede goes on as State Council’s absence from inquiry queried
The Shanghai government says it is still trying to discover the cause of the deadly New Year’s Eve stampede that claimed the lives of 36 people, The Beijing News reports.
The Shanghai government says it is still trying to discover the cause of the deadly New Year’s Eve stampede that claimed the lives of 36 people, The Beijing News reports.
The newspaper also questioned the State Council’s absence from the official investigation into the incident, at the city’s historic Bund waterfront, which injured a further 49 people.
“According to previous incidents, accidents involving the death of more than 30 people are categorised as ‘seriously significant accidents’ and are investigated by the State Council’s special teams,” the newspaper said.
“So what makes the Shanghai Bund stampede special?”
Hundreds of thousands of people had congregated next to Shanghai’s Huangpu River waterfront to watch a light show when the stampede took place at 11.35pm.
Most of those killed were in their 20s; two people are still suffering from severe injures and one of them is in critical condition.
The Supreme People’s Procuratorate announced yesterday that it was looking into four significant incidents that had happened since December to see whether they involved any signs of dereliction of duty.
The collapse of scaffolding at a construction site in Beijing killed 10 people; 18 people died in a gas blast in Foshan, in Guangdong; a fire at a storage building in Harbin, in Heilongjiang province left five firemen dead; a blaze in Yunnan’s Weishan county, badly damaged an historic building.
So far the fatal Shanghai stampede has not been added to the incidents being investigated by state prosecutors, and no other state government body has sent investigators to look into the accident.
“It’s a serious accident that killed 36 people and aroused enormous attention – both at home and abroad,” The Beijing News said.
“[But the authorities] handling the Shanghai stampede are different than those looking into the earlier accidents.”
The State Administration of Work Safety told the newspaper that it had not become involved in the investigation into the stampede because the accident was not related to work safety issues.
The Shanghai stampede differs from all the 14 stampedes that have occurred on the mainland since 2000 because it took place in an area of open space with people assembling in the area in small groups independently.
In contrast, the 37 people killed in a 2004 stampede at a lantern festival in Miyun county, in northeast Beijing, were there as part of an organised group.
The Beijing News highlighted the similarity between the Shanghai stampede and the many accidents that take place each autumn along the banks of the Qiantang River – running through Hangzhou, the capital of Zhejiang province – where people assemble by themselves, rather than as part of organised groups, to watch its famous high tides.
About 100 people have been killed or injured during the past 10 to 20 years after being swept away by high tides along the river. No officials have been punished so far in connection with the deaths and accidents, the newspaper reported.
Du Yili, deputy director of China National Tourism Administration, wrote an article posted on his authority’s website, which said government officials should still bear some responsibility for what happened in Shanghai, even though people had not gone to the Bund as part of organised groups.
“Since there was no organised event, local government officials and their superiors will, out of an instinct, not feel a strong sense of responsibility,” The Beijing News quoted him as saying in his article, published on the website on Monday. “But their responsibilities will not be exempt from law.”
The State Council is known to have investigated a Shanghai fire at a high-rise residential building four years ago that left 58 people dead.
