A two-day trial of 13 people connected to a disastrous hospital fire that killed 37 people last December ended Friday without a verdict made in a local court in northeast China's Jilin Province.

 

The defendants, including head electrician Zhang Diankun, former president Wang Shaowen and vice president Li Mingming of the City Central Hospital of Liaoyuan, are charged with neglecting their duties and the production and sale of substandard electric cables, according to the Liaoyuan Intermediate People's Court.

 

The fire occurred on December 15 last year in a four-storey building which housed clinical, in-patient and office departments.

 

At 4:30 PM the hospital experienced a power cut. Zhang, head of the electrician team at the hospital, went to the electrical distribution room on the second floor and resumed the power supply without checking the cause of the power cut. Then he left.

 

Hearing cracks in the room two or three minutes later, Zhang returned to find plumes of smoke rising from the cables that had caught fire.

 

Zhang immediately ran out of the building to switch off the transformer. However, by the time he returned the fire had started to spread.

 

The 37 people who died were in-patients and members of their families who were visiting at the time. The fire also left 95 others injured, including ten medical workers.

 

Zhang is also charged with reporting the fire too late to the emergency services and failing to inform doctors and patients about the fire, which led to the large number of casualties.

 

Investigators also found that workers laid electric cables which contravened health and safety rules and used substandard cables when rebuilding the distribution room.

 

Yu Hejie, former vice president of the Wuqiang Shenqiang Cable Production Co., Ltd. based in north China's Hebei Province, was accused of producing substandard electric cables, according to the court.

 

(Xinhua News Agency September 2, 2006)