Images of the Beijing Fire

Below are a few photos from the fire that gutted a building in the new China Central Television complex in Beijing tonight. I rode my bike in from the north, and it appeared that the entire complex was aflame, including the famous twisting towers that are the new CCTV headquarters. But upon closer inspection the fire appears to be limited to the building just to the north, which was built to house a Mandarin Oriental hotel scheduled to open this year. Flames climbed several stories up the building and at one point appeared to be coming out of the roof. Much of the structure suffered significant damage. As Simon pointed out below today is the last day of the Chinese New Year celebrations. Large crowds of people are out, and many gathered in the business district to watch the fire. The moon is full, and fireworks have been going off all day. The period when fireworks are permitted within the city ends at midnight. As I rode away from the fire I saw an old man with a roman candle in his hand, launching flaming spheres into the night sky.

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Related Topics: China
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  • discojon

    Has anyone ever seen a skyscraper go up like that? Watching the video on cnn’s ireport, the thing looks like the roman candel Austin mentions. How could it become THAT engulfed?
    Either shoddy building materials, or nonfunctioning sprinkler system are the first thoughts that come to mind.

  • herebei1

    Looking at this picture of the construction,

    http://www.flickr.com/photos/dutchtom/894382157/

    It looks like the zinc ribbed outer shell had a layer of rubber the inside of a 1 meter or so wide lattice gap space under the shell, spanning each side as well as the top of the building. A firework got in there (through the top maybe), set the rubber on fire. between the shell and the rubber, it is 1M wide space, all the way down the sides of the building in the walls from the roof to the ground. Chimney effect + all that rubber, must have looked like an oil well fire with all that rubber burning at once..

  • dgannati

    I wonder if it’s going to collapse as the twin towers. And this one is REALLY burning.

  • johnsmith9876

    With infinite wisdom, the Chinese government has chosen to control news about the fire. News items were released and then retracted, replaced with much abbreviated versions. Web sites were ordered not to post anything other than those on Xinhua, and no comments are allowed. As a result, there are more postings about these ingenious control measures than the actual fire itself. This is a great success of the Chinese government in generating more news from this incident than otherwise would. In addition to sympathy to the accident, China is also getting attention about news control. This is two for the price of one deal the Chinese government is getting. Very clever.

  • http://jesse_evalin.livejournal.com/ evalin77

    Some other images can be found at

    http://www.chinasmack.com/pictures/beijing-cctv-building-on-fire-news-censored/#comment-16991

    Ironically, fireworks (the rumored cause of fire) are normally used for a celebration. Now they are the cause of attack?

    The picture at the above link shows a catwoman claiming responsibility for the actions.

    The date of the attack, much like 9/11 is quite symobolic with current chinese/american cryptology.

    2/9/09

    Nostradamus speaks of three “great ones” who are entities that act like (but not as gods). It’s rumored that two of these “one’s” clubs are currently more radical traditionalist and the third is more proscience atheistic. The two traditionalist are attempting to annihilate the third one’s club. The one’s club is likened to be as god status, thus the letter 9, the great I AM.

    I cracked encrypted messages in my line of work at home (JH by the way) and the codes suggest that the ones clubs often revolve around the shakledment to a person’s simplistic faith in a “holy” book of war and violence. Why worship a god that crucified his own son and
    kicked eve out of a garden for eating an apple from the tree of knowledge???

  • http://jesse_evalin.livejournal.com/ evalin77

    So a bunch of priest were interested in Hitler’s Youth? It doesn’t shock me that the priests were hanging out with musclely boys.

    The rules and simplified version of reality the churches offers is despicable. No sex. No birth control. I respect people who unshakle their mind and think independently rathering than cowering.

    Probably the reason Germany lost was partly their Catholic spy connections. And, of course, The Vatican Bank will be sure to hide Hitler’s money. Of course. They make money off investments.

    Also, there’s speculation this connection between Hilter and the Catholics was largely made due to the Pope’s insatiable appetite for power and knowledge of bioengineering. Nazi’s are known for demanding people to be the best. They don’t even have to pose as modern day saints and be nailed up. They strive to achieve be gods as man and woman.

    We don’t even have to hail Bloody Mary. It’s a really great club to join. Really. But I must say, talking up Catholics on a day China is grieving is really low class and nervy.

  • http://followmehere.com/2009/02/11/chinas-cctv-didnt-cover-its-own-towers-fire/ China’s CCTV didn’t cover its own tower’s fire « Follow Me Here…

    [...] Images of the Beijing Fire (china.blogs.time.com) [...]

  • conscienceinchina

    央视失火韩寒发言

    1:不幸中的万幸,听说大楼在装修阶段,希望不要有人员伤亡。

    2:最重要的也是容易纠缠的一个问题是,这个烟花究竟是老百姓放的,还是央视元宵晚会之后自己放的,相关部门一定要给一个公正的答案。不搪塞,不推卸,不栽赃。

    3:烟花爆竹的燃放一定要注意安全。

    4:此楼一直被说是央视裤衩下的鸡鸡,现在央视自己把鸡鸡给烧了,这样的自宫行为,彻底的符合了央视身为全球第一大太监媒体的形象。的确,央视暂时还不配有鸡鸡。

    5:第一时间,我打开电视,看中央电视台的新闻,央视很镇定,情绪很稳定,在不停的播放澳大利亚的火灾。

    6:如果央视的新闻联播在那时候开始,主持人播报完情况,镜头可以直接摇向窗外再摇回来,成为史上第一个无剪切新闻。

    7:我告诉我朋友,看网站上的新闻,火灾了。朋友打开一看说胡说,根本没有新闻。

    8:我一看,果然都没了,原来是圣旨到——“各网,中央电视台新大楼北配楼发生火灾相关报道,请各网站只用新华社通稿,不发图片,视频,不做深度报道,只放国内新闻区,关闭跟帖,自然滚动,博客论坛不置顶,不推荐。

    9:我们就是这样大事化小,小事化无。财产损失就损失吧,反正纳税人的钱不是烧了就是吃了,横竖总是个浪费,只是希望元宵佳节,楼里的施工人员,消防人员可以平安回家。尤其是消防员,每次在火灾或者车祸现场看见他们,觉得他们还是非常可敬的。

    10:至于央视,真是没有想到,一个永远在讲真话的媒体,居然会遭受这个创伤,上天无眼。

  • http://wtc91154321.wordpress.com wtc91154321

    This building is being rebuilt. Its steel frame structure was undamaged even after intense fire for over 5 hours. Compare that with the World Trade Center building 7 that collapsed on 9/11, and was not hit by an airplane, had a few small isolated fires, but came straight down through the path of greatest resistance at free-fall acceleration in the manner of a textbook perfect, precision controlled demolition. The proven existence of explosive materials in all dust samples tested from the WTC on 9/11 is what makes the difference. But don’t take my word for it — google 7TOCPJ.PDF to read the proof, which is a peer-reviewed scientific paper, and as such would stand in a court of law as expert testimony. I will not speculate as to who planted the explosives at the WTC, but this type of explosive material (nanothermite) can only be manufactured by a very few, very high tech facilities in all the world. It must be left to the crime investigators to find the ones responsible. The point is, steel frame buildings have never collapsed due to fire because it is a physical impossibility to burn hydrocarbon-based materials in open air and reach sufficient temperatures to melt steel. Science does not lie. If you deny this, you deny the laws of physics, something that the official 9/11 conspiracy theorists at NIST and FEMA did when they wrote their absurd, inconclusive and contradictory 9/11 reports.

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