Around 10,000 chickens burned alive in their cages after a truck transporting them to a market in Suizhou, Hubei Province caught fire recently.
The driver, 43-year-old Yuan She, managed to free several hundred of the birds while the fire was still fairly contained, however the majority were overcome by the flames.
According to a police spokesman, the blaze seemed to be caused by the truck's tyres igniting, leading to authorities "examining if faulty brakes were to blame."
"The blaze was very intense," they added. "When firemen arrived on the scene it took 40 minutes to extinguish the flames."
Suffering both financially and emotionally from the incident, Yuan told reporters: "I have lost a lot of money but it was also terrible to see the birds being burnt alive.
"They were destined for restaurants anyway but to die that way was awful.
"They didn't stand a chance with the smoke and the heat and I feel really bad for their suffering."
Despite the driver still in mourning, a herd of opportunistic locals flocked to the scene of the accident to take advantage of the copious free roast chicken.
"Me and others heard about it on the grapevine, everyone was talking about it, there was cooked chicken for everyone," homeless man Wang Ho told local TV.
"Some of it was a bit charred, but a lot of it was still good enough meat to be eaten."
The local police echoed Wang's thoughts, with a spokesman saying: "No-one wanted to see it go to waste, and it saved removing the carcasses if some of the meat was taken away."
[One man, no chickens]
0 User Comments