Another CCTV fire, and protests over compensation

The new CCTV building

There's been another fire at the new CCTV complex in Beijing's Chaoyang District. Unlike February's fire, a raging inferno sparked by an illegal fireworks display, yesterday's incident was minor and resulted in very little damage.

What's not so comforting is a suggestion in The Beijing News that the city's hot summer weather may be to blame:

The man who reported the fire said that as he was driving past Guomao Bridge at around 5:40 yesterday, he saw a column of smoke rising from the roof of the new CCTV building. "The smoke was a little black, and there wasn't very much." The man said that he was unable to determined whether the CCTV roof was on fire, so he called the 119 emergency hotline.

A source familiar with the situation said that four trucks from the Hongmiao fire brigade came to the scene. When the firefighters arrived, the fire had already put itself out. The fire had started on the glass near the helipad, and there were burn marks at the site. The material that had burned was a coating on the glass about one square meter in area. After ascertaining that there was no longer any danger, the firefighters left the scene.

One possible explanation is that the fire occurred because of the scorching weather, which caused the film on the glass to spontaneously ignite. But this theory has not been confirmed by the fire department.

At 6:25 yesterday, this reporter contacted the CCTV editorial department, but the person who answered the phone had not heard of the matter.

The aftermath of February's fire is still playing out: just yesterday morning, residents of the neighborhood surrounding the CCTV building demonstrated to protest what they saw as unreasonable treatment at the hands of the construction company.

The residents, living in a 15-story building adjacent to the charred CCTV structure, said they were angered by a CCTV statement published in Beijing Daily on Aug. 6 threatening "forced relocation".

The statement, by CCTV's office in charge of the new site construction, listed 35 households that, it said, had "not left any contact information or got in touch with CCTV for relocation arrangements or compensation." It threatened forced relocation if these families took no action in 30 days.

"They have all our contact numbers, but never contacted us," said one of the protestors on condition of anonymity. "Now they are making false accusations and trying to blame us for having disrupted the relocation."

The protest lasted from 8:35 until 9:30, when police persuaded the protesters to return home.