A fact from Xinjiang 61st Regiment Farm fire appeared on Wikipedia's Main Page in the Did you know column on 28 November 2021 (check views). The text of the entry was as follows:
Did you know... that the 1977 Yili fire, the deadliest since the founding of the People's Republic of China, was caused by a special jumping firecracker?
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Since it was on the Main Page, I have been cleaning up the English so it reads more like native-written rather than translated. But there are some things I'd like to ask about that go beyond that:
Is there any relevance to the fire and its consequences that the festival hall was built in the first year of the Cultural Revolution?
If the windows were "partially bricked", how they can be described as "windowless holes"? In English that sounds like that would have been an easy way to get out in case of fire, as if the windows had been removed and the apertures left open, although that would have made it so cold inside as to make it pointless to move the movie in there (And really, who the hell ever thought that in extreme western China in early February, it would have been warm enough outside to have the movie under the stars in the first place? But the article doesn't need to answer that question) It doesn't seem like anyone used any fenestration as a means of egress, or even attempted to do so, so I imagine there was something more there than "windowless holes"
What's the basis for the confusion over the death toll? It should be stated in the article.
And speaking of that death toll, whatever it is it's pretty damn high. It seems to be one of the highest for a structure fire not only in China but the entire world. In fact, it seems from this list that it's the deadliest structure fire during the entire 20th century. If so, we need to source that and get it in the article. Daniel Case (talk) 21:52, 30 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]
I have been able to find a source on the position of 'windowless holes', that they were bricked from the bottom up. I haven't added that it was the deadliest fire of the 20th century because I couldn't find a source on that. Somebody else removed the different death toll. Gorden 2211 (talk) 02:52, 13 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
“Brat” alone is a word normally reserved for a spoiled and obnoxious child. “Military brat” enjoys a broader, less pejorative meaning but is still very informal and should not be used in English to describe children killed in a fire. They are “children of military families” or similar. 134.41.86.115 (talk) 17:45, 18 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I too found this remarkably crass.
I’m also not sure why the material about Mao is quite so extensive or prominent — setting off fireworks indoors can cause fires in any context. Foxmilder (talk) 22:57, 3 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]
