Manager, 5 others jailed in hotel fire

BEIJING – A hotel manager and five other people were sentenced Tuesday to up to five years in prison for a fire that killed 33 people in China’s northeast in 2003, the government said.

The sentences handed down in the fire at the Tiantan Hotel in the city of Harbin follow a series of high-profile disasters in China that have prompted a nationwide safety crackdown.

Qi Shengli, the hotel’s manager, and two of his deputies were convicted of illegally mixing solvent into kerosene used for heating and failing to install fire alarms and other required equipment, the official Xinhua News Agency said.

The report said the solvent in the kerosene led to the fire.