SINCE THE BEGINNING of July, Xi'an-based newspaper Chinese Business View has published a series of reports about local communities and revealing quite a number of them lack proper fire prevention arrangements. The newspaper comments:

Fire prevention is of the utmost importance. That's why the law requires the fire prevention facilities and arrangements in residential communities to be checked regularly.

However, the situation is rather bad in certain communities in Xi'an. Some have their fire exits blocked, the fire hydrants of some need repairing, and the property management staff of some have not received training about what to do if there is a fire.

It should be noted that the failure of one community in fire prevention may threaten others. If a fire breaks out in one community and the community fails to extinguish it, the fire might spread to neighboring communities.

Reports show that there are two main problems. First, some communities have never passed the fire prevention tests, yet they still allow people to reside in the buildings. That practice is against the Fire Prevention Law.

Second, some communities have passed fire prevention tests, but have failed to maintain their fire hydrants, sprinkler systems and other firefighting systems. As a result, even though they get an "OK" in the fire prevention tests, if a fire does break out it cannot be extinguished.

In both cases people think they are being protected when actually they are not.

It is time to correct these wrongs. The local law enforcers must be stricter with communities that fail fire prevention tests, and hold more frequent inspections, so as to ensure that fire prevention arrangements of residential communities are effective.