A fire department in Lanzhou, Gansu Province has been ordered to pay about 90,000 yuan (US$10,800) in compensation for arriving too late to fight a deadly fire two years ago, reports Western Business News.

On the night of September 1, 2000, a store in Xifeng, Lanzhou, caught fire. When the store's owner and neighbouring proprietors called police and firefighters, the call to the fire department's 119 line did not go through for a long time.

Police arrived three minutes after they were called.

But firefighters did not reach the scene until half an hour later, by which time the store owner's son had perished in the blaze.

The court ruled that the fire department was responsible for the death of the child and the loss of property in the store, as the department had failed to keep its hotline system in good operating order.

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