Group rentals cleared after fatal fire

Authorities have evicted more than 380 tenants from 90 illegal group rental apartments in the residential compound where two firefighters died Thursday, police said late Friday.

Police, housing management and urban management officers went to the Shenghua Jingyuan compound in Xuhui district Thursday night to clear out apartments that had been altered to house more tenants than the law allows, according to a press release from the Shanghai Municipal Public Security Bureau.

The officers dismantled the partitions that separated 123 rooms in the apartments, police said.

The two firefighters, Qian Lingyun, 23, and Liu Jie, 20, were blown out the window of a 13th-floor apartment in the compound while responding to a fire call Thursday afternoon. They fell down to a platform on the building's second floor and later died at a hospital, local fire authorities said.

A senior fire official said a liquefied gas canister, which is banned in high-rise buildings, was found in the apartment, according to a report on Shanghai Television Station (STV).

The 89-square-meter, two-bedroom apartment had been partitioned into smaller rooms to accommodate its 10 tenants, according to a post on the fire department's microblog.

The fire official said there are 40 to 50 fatal fires in the city each year, according to the STV report. Furthermore, the fatality rate for group rental tenants is higher than that of people living in regular apartments.

Typically, the tiny passages in group rentals pose an obstacle for firefighters responding to an apartment fire, the official told STV.

Fire authorities asked residents to call 96119 to report group rentals. The owner of the apartment where the fire broke out, Shen Huiqing, has been detained, the Xinmin Evening News reported.