GUANGDONG — A couple in southern China who wanted their evening on a mountaintop to go with a bang have been detained after accidentally setting fire to the woods when they set off fireworks.

The pair, who hoped to make it a memorable evening by taking photographs of the setting, ended up starting a blaze on Queya mountain in the northern part of Guangdong province that took two hours for firefighters to put out, news portal kankannews.com reported.

More than 200 firefighters were dispatched to extinguish the fire that burned trees and grasses in an area of 7,000 sq metres (75,300 sq ft), the report said.

The couple were found by police at the scene and detained for 15 days.

“They came to the mountain to watch shooting stars,” police officer Lai Zhiqing told the news website.

The incident also set the Chinese internet ablaze, with 110 million people clicking on stories about the fire on Weibo.

“Besides being detained, they should pay for the cost of the fire, including the human resources involved and natural resources lost in the fire,” read one user comment.

“It has been warm and dry in Guangdong for weeks and the alerts about the risk of forest fires are issued every day. Don’t they read the news?” asked another user.

A larger forest fire in Foshan, a city in central Guangdong earlier this month burned for five days before firefighters were able to put it out. No one was killed or injured in the blaze.

In March this year, 30 firefighters were killed by a fireball while trying to put out a forest fire in Muli county in the southwestern province of Sichuan. Investigators said the fire started when a lightning strike set fire to a pine tree. SOUTH CHINA MORNING POST