(Yicai Global) Jan. 22 -- Images recently circulated on the internet in China that showed that the surface of a building in Northwest China frozen like an ice sculpture. This, it turned out, was the result of human error and culpable staff were afterwards punished, btime.com reported yesterday.

The building, located in Shizuishan city, Ningxia Hui Autonomous Region, houses the city's environmental agency. The incident occurred in early December, internet users familiar with the matter revealed. The reason a mist-spraying truck turned the building into an ice sculpture is because a national air quality monitoring network is nearby and staff used the truck to spray mist in a bid to improve environmental monitoring data, but temperatures plummeted to ten degrees below zero, and the truck driver misjudged the timing, and so inadvertently transformed the building into a sculpture, per the report.

On-duty duty of Shizuishancity environment agency explained that a broken pipe caused the icing, which was a chronic problem, but the local environmental agency found that the transformation resulted from these attempts to improve the regulatory data, and held guilty staff severely to account. Directors Mao Junfeng and vice director Cai Tianming received warnings and other sanctions, and their infractions were also publicly announced.