Xinjiang 61st Regiment Farm fire

The 61st Regiment Farm fire and stampede (Chinese: 61团场火灾) was a fire that occurred on 18 February 1977 at 20:15 Xinjiang Time in a public hall showing a movie. The direct cause of the fire was the regiment hesitating to dispose of the memorial wreaths of the late Mao Zedong for five months, and eventually the wreaths were ignited by a spinning top-like firecracker set off by a 12-year-old boy at the Chinese New Year celebrations. The farm was a military-agricultural colony run by the Xinjiang 61st regiment; hence, most deaths were among the military brats. Overall, 694 died and 161 became disabled; among the dead were 597 of the 1,600 schoolchildren on the farm. This is also the deadliest fire in China after 1949, one of the deadliest disasters in Chinese history, and one of the deadliest fireworks accidents.^{[2][3][4][5][6]}

After Mao Zedong died on 9 September 1976, the Xinjiang 61st regiment ordered the locals to make wreaths to demonstrate their loyalty to Mao.^[2] By Chinese custom, those funeral wreaths would have been incinerated.^[a] However, the regiment feared incinerating the wreaths would draw accusations of disrespecting Mao; later, their superiors ordered them to keep all the wreaths in a hall.

Five months later came the 1977 Chinese New Year, the first back-to-normal Chinese New Year after the Cultural Revolution from 1966 to 1976. During that period, the Red Guards deemed the Chinese New Year to be one of the "Four Olds" that should be denounced in rallies. The Red Guards proclaimed a "revolutionized New Year" which people shall not set off new year fireworks, shall continue work in the regiment farm rather than going home for reunion, shall not pay respects to ancestors, and shall make the blessing "Wish you see Chairman Mao this year" rather than the traditional blessing Gong Xi Fa Cai ("Congratulations and be prosperous").^[7][8][9]

At this particularly lively and awaited 1977 Chinese New Year, the regiment farm showed the movie Jeon-u (1958), a North Korean movie about the Chinese "War of Resisting America and Assisting Korea". Towards the end of the movie, during an the iconic hugging scene between a Chinese and North Korean soldier,^[2] a 12-year-old boy set off a spinning top-like firecracker ("地老鼠") to celebrate the new year and the end of a 10-year-ban on fireworks.^[2] He was unable to control its spinning path on the ground, and it spun into the five-month-old wreaths of Mao Zedong. As children brought their own chairs to the hall, when the fire broke out, they ran with their chairs to the one exit, resulting in a crowd crush.^[3] The disaster was first publicly reported in China 18 years later, in 1995.^[2]

The 61st Regiment of the Xinjiang Production and Construction Corps stationed in Alimali,^[1] now in the northeastern suburb of Khorgas City, Ili Prefecture, Xinjiang, 8 km from the Soviet Kazakhstan border. When the fire broke out in 1977, the "regiment farm", a military-agricultural colony, was supervised and investigated by the Communist Committee of Ili Prefecture.

The festival hall was built in 1966, primarily used for Maoist denunciation rallies during the Cultural Revolution. It had an area of 760 square metres (8,200 sq ft), with a usable floor space of 601 square metres (6,470 sq ft) and a wooden roof, with reeds,^[10] two layers of oiled felt and three layers of asphalt. In 1972, a vertical gallery was added outside the main door of the hall with two cylindrical pillars a metre wide. The hall originally had 17 large windows and seven doors. For an informational session on farming, the hall was modified in March 1975, bricking the lower part of the windows, leaving only 17 0.6 metres (2.0 ft) by 1.4 metres (4.6 ft) windowless holes, because the management believed the floor to ceiling windows were impractical.^[3] This made it difficult for people to escape, as the height to overcome became greater.^[11] In February 1975, to welcome superiors coming for a communist propaganda meeting ("学理论、抓路线、促春讲现场会"), the hall underwent further modification, during which three of the doors were sealed and the other three were either locked or bound with steel wire, leaving only a 1.6-metre-wide (5.2 ft) main door on the south side of the building.

In 1977, according to the Chinese calendar, the New Year was celebrated on 18 February. Local cooperatives sold a large number of firecrackers for the event. At 9 p.m., the North Korean movie Jeon-u ("Comrade"), a movie depicting the Chinese campaign of "Resist America and Assist Korea", was scheduled to be shown outdoors, but due to temperatures around −20 to −30 °C (−4 to −22 °F), it was moved to the festival hall instead.^[3]

When the fire occurred, the rear half of the hall was still occupied by the wreaths placed on 9 September 1976 for the late Mao Zedong,^[3] and the main door had apparently been half sealed, ostensibly to maintain order, leaving only an 80-centimetre (31 in) opening.^[10]

At around 19:30 Xinjiang Time (21:30 Beijing Time), the movie started. At 20:15 Xinjiang Time, a 12-year-old boy (grade 6), Zhao Guanghui, lit a "ground rat", a type of spinning top-like firecracker. It spun into the pile of wreaths, setting the wreaths on fire.^[12] The fire climbed to the ceiling, with the projection screen and wires mounted on the roof rapidly igniting, spreading dense smoke in the hall. The burning wooden panels fell and asphalt started falling off the roof. Due to the only exit being too small, most people were unable to escape, leading to high levels of casualties. According to witnesses it took only half an hour from the start of the fire to the roof collapse.^[3]

After the fire broke out, on 19 February 1977, the Yili Military District phoned Huocheng and Huiyuan Counties, and the Yili Military District 8th Border Guards Regiment, requesting assistance at the 61st Division. Two companies from the 8th Regiment arrived, with around 280 soldiers. Each soldier was equipped with a pickaxe, a shovel and two masks.^[3] The slow response was due to the closest firefighters being 80 km (50 mi) away.^[3]

看到部队官兵赶到，群众让出一条通道，但门口根本进不去，靠门口的地方，尸体堆得有近一米高。大多数人烧得和煤炭渣一样，有些人像沥青一样粘在一起。空气中充斥着一股令人作呕的味道，不戴口罩根本不可能靠近。我们拿着铁锹和十字镐站在尸体堆里不知如何下手，也不忍心下手。但是我们的任务就是清理现场，大家必须动手。

Seeing that the soldiers arrived, the crowd cleared out a path, but the doorway couldn't be entered, as bodies were stacked nearly a meter high at the door. Most of them were burnt to a cinder, and some were stuck together like asphalt. The air was filled with a sickening stench so foul it was impossible to get close without wearing a mask. We stood before the pile of corpses holding our shovels and pickaxes, not knowing how to begin the task at hand, and we couldn't bear to begin. However, our mission was to clean up the scene, so everybody had to do something.

— Chen Fuyuan, (陈福元) Deputy Commander of the 8th Regiment^[3]

After a cleanup lasting around four hours, the job was mostly done. The deceased were placed in the yard surrounding the ruins of the hall.^[3]

This was the deadliest fire in China after 1949 and one of the deadliest disasters in Chinese history. In total 694 died and 161 became disabled.^[3][4][5][6] Among the 1,600 schoolchildren in the regiment's farm, 597 died.^[4][5][6] Many had been found at the front door, in a stack of people around 2–3 metres (6.6–9.8 ft) high, while those unable to reach it were killed by burning asphalt or falling roof tiles.^[10] The stack was made worse by those who brought their own chairs to watch the movie, which further blocked exits. Eventually, a hole was smashed in a sealed door on the northern side, allowing a few children to be rescued.^[13]

The deputy party secretary of the Yili Farming Bureau, Ma Ji, was the leading investigator for the "2.18" fire. He arrived at the scene on the morning of 19 February. Some relatives on site were angry, and tried placing the blame on Zhou Zhenfu, the local party secretary of Yili, unaware that he had lost his daughter in the fire. To calm the anger, at the end of February, Ma Ji also took the role of the party secretary of the 61st Division and took charge of the aftermath of the "2.18" fire.^[3]

After all the deceased were buried, some families of the deceased remained angry, and plotted to exhume the corpse of the daughter of Zhou Zhenfu in protest. Ma Ji convinced the upper-level leaders to not prosecute any of the protestors, and he resolved the disturbance through his grants for families of victims to take holidays or switch to other jobs.^[3]

Due to the sensitive nature of the news^{[clarification needed]} at the time, it was not heavily broadcast within China, although apparently it was already known by foreign media. The fire was initially blamed on Soviet revisionism, i.e. that it was set by class enemies. Afterwards, the fire was largely blamed on Zhao Guanghui, the child who set the firecracker, without seriously considering the effect of the abandoned wreaths.^[10]

Zhao escaped unhurt before the main panic. Eventually, with his parents, he surrendered himself to the police. The month after the fire, he was sentenced to reform through labor and later to juvenile detention. After being released, he went to Guangdong. The people who organized the movie showing were detained for almost two and a half years, until the local court chose not to prosecute. The party officials responsible for the festival hall were demoted and sent to farms.^[13]

In July 1978, after the investigation was complete, Ma Ji was promoted to deputy party secretary of Yining.^[3]

The Soviet press picked up the news instantly because the fire was within 8 km of the Kazakhstan border. The Chinese propaganda initially claimed the disaster was started by "class enemies" and those aligned with Soviet Revisionism.^[14]

A memorial park, named Jianyuan started construction in 1997 after bulldozing the remains of the hall. It was designed to be a theme park on fire safety, but was yet to be finished in 2007.^[3]

The victims of the fire are buried at Sandapian, so named as this cemetery was formed by joining three pieces of land.^[3][10]

• Fires in China
• List of disasters in China by death toll
• 1994 Karamay fire, Xinjiang, 325 deaths
• List of fireworks accidents