Death toll from scaffolding collapse hits 74
China has had several major worksafety accidents in recent years
The death toll from the collapse of scaffolding at a construction site in eastern China rose to 74, state media said, in the country’s worst worksafety accident in over two years.
Two others were injured after the work platform at a power plant cooling tower that was under construction collapsed on Thursday, sending iron pipes, steel bars and wooden planks tumbling down on the workers, the official Xinhua news agency reported.
The cooling tower was being built in the city of Fengcheng in Jiangxi province when the scaffolding tumbled down, an official with the local Work Safety Administration who would only give his surname, Yuan, said by telephone.
About 500 rescue workers, including paramilitary police officers, dug through the debris with their hands, according to state broadcaster CCTV. It showed debris strewn across the floor of the cavernous, 165m- high concrete cooling tower, in the middle of which stood an unfinished structure.
Chinese President Xi Jinping urged local governments to learn from the accident and hold those responsible accountable. He said that following recent work accidents, the State Council, China’s Cabinet, should carry out thorough inspections of work sites to reduce risks.
China has suffered several major work- safety accidents in recent years blamed on weak regulatory oversight, systemic corruption and pressure to boost production amid a slowing economy.
The scaffolding accident happened the same day that Yang Dongliang, a former head of the State Administration of Work Safety, stood trial in a Beijing court for allegedly accepting US$ 4.3 million in bribes between 2002 and last year, as he rose through the ranks as an official in Tianjin before joining the regulatory agency.
Yang was sacked in August 2015 in connection with a massive explosion at an illegal chemical warehouse in the northern port of Tianjin that killed 173 people, most of them firefighters and police officers.
Construction of the 1000megawatt coal- fired power plant at the centre of Thursday’s accident began in Fengcheng in late 2015 and was expected to be finished in November 2017. The cause of the collapse i s under investigation.
Hundreds of coal- fired power plants are under construction in China. Beijing has vowed to solve a looming problem of power oversupply and cap greenhouse gas emissions in the medium term, but economic planners said earlier in November they intend to boost coal power generation capacity by a fifth over the next five years, or the equivalent output of hundreds of new coal- fired plants.