Orphanage blaze raises questions

Calls for greater State role after the fire that claimed 7 lives, report Xiang Mingchao in Henan, He Na, Peng Yining and Cui Jia in Beijing.

Although four days have passed since the fire that claimed seven lives at a private orphanage in Lankao county, Henan province, the two-story apartment, its blackened walls clearly visible, is still filled with the stench of smoke and burning.

The windows are shattered and the water used to extinguish the blaze is now just a sheet of ice covering a section of the floor. Except for one ruined electric fan, it's difficult to identify the fire-damaged objects scattered around the room.

The blaze that engulfed the house on the morning of Jan 4 killed six children and one adult. A seventh child was severely injured and is currently being treated in a hospital. The children who died were all younger than 6 years old. The youngest was just 6 months old.

The cause of the fire has yet to be established and the investigation is ongoing, according to local government sources.

"From the moment I ran to help put out the fire until the moment the ambulance arrived, I didn't hear any of them cry out," said Li Qinghua, who owns a small electrical appliance store and lives not far from the scene of the tragedy.

"Those children's lives were pitiful. They had already escaped death once after being abandoned by their parents, but destiny was still cruel and they still couldn't escape death," said Li tearfully.

Clothing and quilts, badly burned and blackened by smoke, spilled out on the stairs and over the beds. In one room a bunk bed was almost burned to a cinder.

The house was once home to 18 abandoned children. Most of them had congenital conditions, such as cleft palates and infantile paralysis. Some had been diagnosed with mental health disorders.

The 10 surviving children are now in the care of the welfare department in nearby Kaifeng.

The building is owned by Yuan Lihai, a local woman in her late 40s, and had provided shelter for orphans and abandoned children since 1987. Yuan, who funded the refuge from her own pocket, was not at home when the fire broke out because she was taking some of the children to school.

Yuan Lihai's name is well known to the local media, which have often reported on her acts of kindness. During the past two decades and more, Yuan has played the role of surrogate mother to almost 100 abandoned infants and children, leading some locals to nickname her "Loving Mother". Many of the children she rescued over the years are now adults with families of their own.

Media spotlight

However, this time Yuan's name is in the media spotlight for the wrong reasons. Many local people have expressed sympathy and applauded her example. However, others have spoken of their misgivings about Yuan's "adoptions", muttering darkly that she used the house and the children to make money. Some have even accused her of selling abandoned children for profit

"Yuan generally didn't stay with the children at night. She hired a local person to take charge of their daily lives. She doesn't earn much by selling snacks at the gate of the county hospital, so where does all the money (to run the home) come from?" asked one neighbor, who declined to be named.

Yuan's high blood pressure resulted in her losing consciousness on Sunday morning and she is currently receiving treatment at the hospital.

When local reporters interviewed Yuan's neighbors, most were full of praise: "Although her given name "Lihai" can mean someone that is hard to deal with, she's actually an easygoing person. She speaks to the kids tenderly and greets her neighbors warmly. Many children would have died if not for Yuan's kindness," said one neighbor, Wang Meilian.

"One of the children Yuan adopted is now grown up. She returned with her boyfriend on National Day last year to give Yuan a gift," she added.

Yang Peimin, director of Lankao Civil Affairs Department, said Yuan's adoption of children was admirable, but illegal. "It's not consistent with China's Law of Adoption and the related policies. The local civil affairs department has never provided any adoption references or certificates for her," he said.

Some experts and media reports claimed that the local officials have made Yuan a scapegoat because of the public outcry, which has drawn attention to both the inadequate provisions afforded to orphans and a lack of child welfare.

On Jan 6, the Ministry of Civil Affairs announced that it will instigate a national campaign to check safety at public institutions and individual homes where children are fostered.

"The Lankao fire is not an isolated incident. Without a functioning child welfare system, tragedies are likely to happen in other places too. In my opinion, the tragedy is partly a result of China's child welfare system," said Wang Zhenyao, a former civil affairs official who is now director of the One Foundation Philanthropic Research Institute at Beijing Normal University.

Child welfare laws and bureaus, long established in other countries, are still not on the agenda in China. They are a fundamental guarantee of child welfare and without them, child welfare is little more than a series of well-meant phrases, he said.