A body found over the weekend brought the death toll of a hotel blaze in Shantou, Guangdong Province, to 31; another 21 people were seriously injured in the fire.

The cause is not yet known.

Firefighters were not called to the scene for 35 minutes.

The disaster broke out at 11:40 AM on Friday at the Shantou Huanan Hotel in the city's Chaonan District.

However, the local fire brigade did not receive news of the disaster until 12:15. It took firemen more than two hours to extinguish the blaze.

Sixty-seven people were rescued, five of whom died. More than 20 firemen suffered from smoke inhalation. Four were taken to hospital.

Huang Donghua, from the Shantou Information Office, said the fire would not have been so bad if staff at the four-story hotel had known how to inform guests and the fire brigade of the blaze.

He said: "An initial investigation showed that passers-by, not hotel staff, reported the fire and it was raging by the time the fire brigade arrived."

Further, decorations put up at the hotel were made of flammable rather than fireproof material.

Huang added that a lack of faucets at the hotel for hosepipes made it more difficult to get the fire under control.

And he said a lack of knowledge about escape routes was also a reason for the high number of casualties.

A local newspaper said most of the victims were women working as hostesses in the hotel's karaoke rooms.

Their fake personal information will make identifying their bodies more difficult.

Police are still trying to track down the owner of the hotel who fled after the fire, one of the province's most serious accidents in the past decade.
Huang said they were also gearing up to examine the safety features of all hotels, restaurants and entertainment facilities in the city.

Five years ago, another hotel fire in the city killed five people. All were government officials on business in the city.

In related news, a blaze caused by an explosion detonated by local geological surveyors and that raged for 10 days has destroyed 1,260 hectares of forest. The fire occurred in Muli Tibetan Autonomous County in Liangshan Yi Autonomous Prefecture in southwest China's Sichuan Province. No casualties were reported.

Six hundred firefighters are to remain at the scene until Thursday if it does not rain, according to the provincial forest fire control office.

The fire broke out on June 1. A special team, headed by Du Yongsheng, director of the Fire Control Office under the State Forestry Administration, reached Muli on June 7 to direct firefighting and rescue operations.

Thanks to the team and more than 2,600 firefighters, the fire was finally put out after 10 days.

According to the provincial forest fire control office, exact losses are not yet known.

It was the third forest fire in Muli since May 17. The previous two fires destroyed 1,440 hectares of forest in the county, Sichuan's largest forested area.

According to Li Hongwei, Party secretary of Muli, the county has 850,000 hectares of forest, 790,000 of which are virgin forests. Its wood reserve is 105 million cubic meters, accounting for one-tenth of Sichuan's total.

(China Daily June 13, 2005)