Mandarin Oriental Hotel Fire
Skyscraper-Turned-Torch Remains Standing
On February 9, 2009,
in the middle of the Lunar New Year,
the distinctive 40-story Mandarin Oriental hotel
in Beijing's Television Cultural Centre (TVCC)
erupted in sparks and flames that consumed the building
from top to bottom
in an intense fire lasing for several hours.
Blamed on a ground-based fireworks display gone afoul
or illegal fireworks operations inside of the building,
the fire started around the tower's top and proceded downward
around the tower's sides
while fireworks continued to burst dramatically above the blaze.
1
The spectacular torching of the Mandarin tower
further underscores the anomalous nature of the official explanation
of the total collapse of the Twin Towers and WTC 7 --
an explanation that primarily blames fires for causing
the "global collapse" of those structures.
It is yet another example of a severe fire
that failed to induce even the partial collapse of a skyscraper.
Although less similar to the WTC towers than
other skyscrapers ravaged by fires,
the Mandarin tower is notable
for the magnitude of the fire it withstood --
a fire that dwarfed the fires
that preceded the "collapses" of each of the the WTC skyscrapers.
Coming exactly 2711 days after 9/11/2001,
the burning of the Hotel Mandarin Oriental,
which was unoccupied pending its completion,
killed one firefighter.
References
1.
China state broadcaster apologizes for hotel fire, AP,
