67 killed in construction accident at power plant in east China
At least 67 people have been killed in an accident at a construction site in eastern China, officials say.
The deadly incident occurred in the city of Fengcheng in the southeastern province of Jiangxi at around 07:00 a.m. local time on Thursday (23:00 GMT on Wednesday), when an under-construction platform of a power plant’s cooling tower plunged to the ground, China’s official Xinhua news agency quoted local officials as saying.
It further said that a number of others sustained injuries. An unknown number of other workers have also been trapped under a mass of concrete slabs and steel girders strewn in a heap on the site.
Rescue teams, with a fleet of red fire engines have arrived at the scene, the report added.
The cause of the accident is in under investigation.
On October 24, a powerful explosion, blamed on illegally stored explosives, ripped through a prefabricated house built inside a residential compound in the Xinmin town in Fugu County, killing nearly a dozen people and wounding some 160 others.
Deadly accidents are fairly common at industrial sites in China, particularly in the mining sector, which has gained a bad reputation for its poor safety regulations.
Explosions have previously been blamed on inappropriately stored chemicals or industrial explosives, which are easy to access in China’s flourishing coal mining sector.
On September 27, an explosion ripped through a colliery in the northwestern autonomous region of Ningxia Hui, killing some 20 miners.
On August 12, a string of major explosions took place at a chemical warehouse in the port city of Tianjin, killing over 170 people and devastating huge areas surrounding the site of the incident. The warehouse had stored such hazardous materials as sodium cyanide.
Beijing has vowed to improve the dismal safety rate at accident-prone facilities, with President Xi Jinping saying authorities should learn the lessons paid for with blood after the explosions in Tianjin.
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