When the Japanese army approached Wuhan in the fall of 1938, the Nationalist Army engaged the Japanese in the surrounding regions for over four months, allowing the KMT to withdraw farther inland, to Chongqing, bringing with them important supplies, assets, and many refugees. While he was en route to Chongqing, Zhou was nearly killed in the "fire of Changsha", which lasted for three days, destroyed two thirds of the city, killed twenty thousand civilians, and left hundreds of thousands of people homeless. This fire was deliberately caused by the retreating Nationalist army in order to prevent the city from falling to the Japanese. Due to an organizational error (it was claimed), the fire was begun without any warning to the residents of the city.