Chinese woman raised over 100 children

The house where the fire broke out, was used by a woman named Yuan Lihai, to shelter orphans and abandoned children.

Dubbed by media as a "benevolent mother", Yuan Lihai has taken in over 100 abandoned children in the past 27 years. The older ones have already married and left her home.

At the time of the fire, Yuan was caring for 34 children, 16 of them disabled. They lived in two locations, one a two-story building behind the Lankao People's Hospital, and the other was where the fire broke out, a two-room bungalow house to the west of the hospital.