One person was killed and 75 others were injured while setting
off fireworks over the past day, the capital city's firework office
said on Thursday.
The victim, surnamed Zhang, was badly injured while igniting a
kind of homemade firework ball on Wednesday midnight, eve of the
Lunar New Year, in his own courtyard in Pinggu District.
He died in the wee hours of Thursday after emergency medical
treatment failed.
Investigation shows that Zhang had drank alcohol before he
mishandled the firecracker.
The firework office, which was launched Thursday morning to
supervise firework displays during the holiday, said fireworks had
triggered 90 fires since Wednesday night, injuring another 75
people.
Beijing has cordoned off 102 streets in 106 residential
compounds for people to enjoy firework display so far.
The city lifted a 12-year ban on firecrackers in 2006. Since
then, two deaths, 1,510 injuries and more than 2,400 fires caused
by mishandled firecrackers had been reported.
Deafening and sometimes fatal, firecrackers are nonetheless an
essential element of China's most important festival of Lunar New
Year, which falls on Thursday this year.
Beijing tightened control over illegal firecracker production
this year by launching a crackdown on substandard firecracker
workshops throughout the city.
Checkpoints have been set up at entrances of every major
highways into Beijing to prevent the inflow of illegal
firecrackers.
Beijing police destroyed 3,000 boxes of substandard
firecrackers, valued at more than 1.2 million yuan (167,000 U.S.
dollars), earlier this month. They were seized and detonated
because of "potential danger to life and property".
China accounts for about 75 percent of the world's total annual
firecracker production.
(Xinhua News Agency February 7, 2008)