BEIJING - The municipal authorities in Nanjing, the capital of Jiangsu province, have begun a citywide check of potential fire hazards, especially those linked to electric bikes, after a fire in a high-rise residential building killed 15 people and injured 44 others in the early morning of Feb 23.

The fire was put out at 6am the same day, about 1½ hours after it broke out. Search-and-rescue work was concluded at 2pm that day.

The fire is believed to have been caused by e-bikes parked on the ground floor.

The 30-plus-storey building comprises about 400 apartments, and is one of six buildings of the same size in the government-subsidised neighbourhood built in 2013 in downtown Nanjing.

Like the other five buildings in the same neighbourhood, the structure’s ground-floor area, which does not have outer walls, is a public space that was turned into a carpark for e-bikes, bicycles and motorcycles. Charging posts for e-bikes were also installed.

State regulations strictly ban the charging of e-bikes or their batteries, or even parking e-bikes, in both residential or office buildings.

Yet, the builders and property managers turned the ground floor of these apartment blocks into parking and charging sites for e-bikes.

The open space and wall-less structure of the ground floor allowed air to fan the flames, contributing to the rapid spread of the fire from the ground floor to the top of the building.

Statistics show that about 80 per cent of e-bike fires – which result in an explosion in seconds, making them almost uncontrollable – occur while the vehicle is charging, and more than half of such fires occur during night-time charging.

Furthermore, businesses that offer modification of e-bikes and their batteries to raise the vehicles’ speeds and load capacity far beyond national standards are conducted openly in many cities.

About 21,000 fires caused by e-bikes were reported nationwide in 2023, an increase of 17.4 per cent compared with in 2022. The 2022 figure was 23.4 per cent higher than in 2021.

As the largest manufacturer and consumer of e-bikes – one in four Chinese has an e-bike, on average – and seeing that the country has moved most people into high-rise buildings in fast-expanding cities over the past decade, the authorities are obliged to take more concrete actions to prevent the commonest means of transport from becoming a threat to life.

CHINA DAILY/ASIA NEWS NETWORK