▲ The area blackened by the fire on the railing is the burnt dormitory. (Xinhua News Agency / Photo)
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- A village official from the Yanshanpu Village Committee said that the children who died or were injured were all third-grade students, “They were all around ten years old, and they were in one dormitory, the kind with a large shared bed, with more than a dozen people living in one dormitory.”
- In 2016, Henan Province issued a notice stating that the average usable area per elementary school student dormitory should be at least 3 square meters, and the number of students per room in student dormitories should ideally be 4-8, not exceeding 10.
- In December 2022, the Fangcheng County Government announced the basic information of private schools and the 2021 inspection results registration form, which showed that the Yanshanpu Village Yingcai School in Dushu Town, Fangcheng County, failed the annual inspection and needed to be rectified. The specific rectification content was not disclosed.
This article was first published in Southern Weekend and may not be reproduced without authorization
Text｜Southern Weekend Reporter Zheng DanSouthern Weekend Interns Zhang Yongqi, Jiang Hongyi, Wu PeiruResponsible Editor｜He HainingAt 23:00 on January 19, 2024, the Fangcheng County 119 received a police report that a fire broke out in a dormitory of Yingcai School in Yanshanpu Village, Dushu Town, Fangcheng County, Henan Province. The Fangcheng County Fire Rescue Brigade quickly arrived at the scene, and the open flames were extinguished 38 minutes later. According to reports from China Central Radio Network, the accident caused 13 students to die and 1 student to be injured. The injured are being treated in the hospital, and their vital signs are currently stable.
After the accident, Henan Province and Nanyang City (under the jurisdiction of Fangcheng County) established an accident disposal command center to carry out accident investigation and post-accident disposal work, and the person in charge of the school involved has been controlled.
“This school is a branch school, about seven or eight kilometers away from the Yingcai School in the town.” Yang Ping (pseudonym), a village official from the Yanshanpu Village Committee, told Southern Weekend reporters that there are four Yingcai schools in Dushu Town, all of which are private schools. The school where the accident occurred was built in the village, and the children who died or were injured were all third-grade students, “They were all around ten years old, and they were in one dormitory, the kind with a large shared bed, with more than a dozen people living in one dormitory.”
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The burnt dormitory is suspected to have housed more than ten people
On the night of the incident, Yang Ping heard the sound of fire trucks and ambulances and knew something had happened. “Now I don’t know what caused the fire. After this happened, leading cadres from the city and the province came. In the morning, experts from the Ministry of Emergency Management came to find out the cause.”
According to Yang Ping, one injured student suffered extensive burns and has now been transferred to Zhengzhou People’s Hospital for treatment. “One teacher was also injured. He was the teacher in the dormitory who was in charge of the children. He ran out and shouted for help, and another female teacher was also slightly injured.”
Yang Ping said that the school usually has four to five hundred students in school, and children from several nearby towns come here to study. “Private schools, now young people work outside, and many children are left with the elderly at home, so they come here to study.” After the incident, all the remaining students have been sent home.
A sixth-grade student from another elementary school in Fangcheng County told Southern Weekend reporters that his cousin was studying at the school where the incident occurred and was sent home by the police at around 11 p.m. that night. “My cousin is in the sixth grade. He inhaled a little smoke last night, and he is going to the hospital today to have a look.”
The elementary school student said that the local elementary schools have not yet started their winter vacation, which usually ends with the final exams on January 24. There are many boarding schools in Dushu Town, and Yingcai School operates on a ten-day-on, four-day-off system, “From the weekend of the even-numbered weeks to Tuesday of the following week, and returning to school on Tuesday afternoon.” Another shop owner nearby also told Southern Weekend reporters that the local schools are still in class and will have their winter vacation in about a week.
A villager living three hundred meters away from the school where the incident occurred told Southern Weekend reporters that the children who died were also from their village, and that multiple students slept in one dormitory at the school, “The door is small, and there are too many people, making it difficult to escape.”
Currently, there has been no official announcement on the number of people living in the dormitory where the incident occurred. On the morning of January 20, Southern Weekend reporters repeatedly called the phone of Li Jizhong, the legal representative of the school where the incident occurred, but no one answered. In a report by CCTV that asked five questions about the fire accident, one of the questions was: 15 students in one dormitory, is there a problem with the safety exits not being clear?
In 2016, the “Notice on Printing and Distributing the Basic Standards for Running Schools in Compulsory Education Schools in Henan Province (Trial)” issued by Henan Province pointed out that the average usable area per elementary school student dormitory should be at least 3 square meters. Student dormitories should be easy to manage and close themselves, and safety protection facilities should be installed at the entrances and exits of the first floor and windows. The number of students per room in student dormitories should ideally be 4-8, not exceeding 10.
Earlier, the “Design Standards for Primary and Secondary School Dormitories” implemented by the Ministry of Housing and Urban-Rural Development since 2012 also clearly stipulated the design standards for student dormitories in primary and secondary schools: the number of students per room in student dormitories should not exceed 6, and the usable area per student in the room should not be less than 3 square meters.
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Yanshanpu Village Yingcai School in Dushu Town on January 20. (Xinhua News Agency reporter Wu Gang / Photo)
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More than 1,600 fire safety lessons in all primary and secondary schools in the county
According to information on the Fangcheng County government website, the Fangcheng County Yingcai School Yanshanpu Community Branch in Dushu Town is a private elementary school, with 720 students and 39 teachers, established in September 2012, with Li Jizhong as the legal representative, according to the Fangcheng County government website.
In addition, public government information shows that the legal representatives of the other three schools, Fangcheng County Dushu Town Yingcai School, Fangcheng County Dushu Town Yingcai School Affiliated Kindergarten, and Fangcheng County Dushu Town Yanshanpu Yingcai School Affiliated Kindergarten, are all Li Jizhong. The earliest established school is Fangcheng County Dushu Town Yingcai School, which opened in January 2006.
“The tuition is one or two thousand yuan per semester, which is not cheap in the countryside.” Yang Ping said that Principal Li Jizhong is a man in his fifties. “He bought land in our village to build the school. The village has a good location, right on the side of the national highway. Yanshanpu Village is relatively large, and many rural children from dozens of miles around come here to study.”
Nanyang Daily reported on Yingcai School in Dushu Town in 2013: The school implements closed campus management and implements a comprehensive responsibility system for student life management teachers. The school has also been successively rated as the town’s “Advanced Unit for Social Schooling”, the county’s “Advanced Private School”, the county’s “Advanced Unit for Moral Education Construction”, the city’s “Advanced Unit for Composition Teaching”, and the province’s “Top 100 Private Schools”.
According to a recruitment article published in 2016 by the “Fangcheng County Dushu Town Yingcai School” WeChat public account, the Yanshanpu Community Branch of Dushu Town Yingcai School is located at the Huangtuwa Road intersection, covering an area of 35 acres, with a construction area of about 17,000 square meters. The source of students covers Dushu, Yanglou, Bao’an and other towns. The school has an elementary school department and a kindergarten department, and implements boarding management and small-class teaching.
The 2021 Fangcheng County Private School (Kindergarten) Annual Inspection Results Registration Form shows that both Fangcheng County Yanshanpu Village Yingcai School and Fangcheng County Dushu Town Yingcai School failed the annual inspection and need to be rectified. The specific rectification content was not disclosed.
Another document, the Fangcheng County Education and Sports Bureau’s “Notice on Announcing the Results of the 2022 Annual Inspection of Private Schools in the County”, shows that the County Education and Sports Bureau conducted a 2022 school operation inspection of 134 private kindergartens and 39 private primary and secondary schools in the county from February 20 to 28, 2023.
The inspection team’s inspection and evaluation results show that Fangcheng County Yanshanpu Community Yingcai School and Fangcheng County Dushu Town Yingcai School Yanshanpu Community Branch Affiliated Kindergarten passed the annual inspection, and Fangcheng County Dushu Town Yingcai School and Fangcheng County Dushu Town Yingcai School Affiliated Kindergarten basically passed the annual inspection. For the private schools that “basically passed”, the County Education and Sports Bureau established a rectification account, pointed out the existing problems, and put forward rectification opinions, with a rectification period of 3 months.
Yang Ping recalled that the school that caught fire had a previous safety accident, “Someone was killed when the school was being built.”. Two years ago, on a Sunday, a fire also occurred at the Yingcai School in the town, “I don’t know how the fire was caused. There were no students in the school, and only one room was burned.”. As of the time of publication, Southern Weekend reporters were unable to verify this information.
When asked whether they had checked the school’s safety hazards, Yang Ping said: “This school doesn’t belong to the village. We don’t go in if there’s nothing to do. If we go in, they have to lead us.”
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