Scaffold collapse kills 40
Deaths at Chinese power station building site add to poor safety record
AT LEAST 40 people were killed when part of a power station under construction in China collapsed yesterday, the latest industrial accident in a country with a dismal safety record.
A cooling tower platform plunged to the ground in the early hours, trapping an unknown number of people beneath it, the official Xinhua news agency reported.
Pictures of the scene in Fengcheng, in the central province of Jiangxi, showed a grey mass of concrete slabs, steel girders and twisted metal splayed in a heap on the ground inside a large round structure.
Hard-hatted rescue workers in neon jumpsuits carried bodies out from the site on stretchers wrapped in orange sheeting.
Rescue work was under way, and a total of 32 fire engines and 212 military personnel had been deployed to the scene, the Jiangxi provincial fire department said on a verified social media account.
Xinhua said the toll was likely to rise as an unknown number of people are still trapped.
Five injured workers were being treated in hospital, it said.
About 68 people were on site when the collapse happened, according to local government media outlet China Jiangxi Online.
They had been in the middle of a shift change, according to Xinhua.
Construction of two 1 000megawatt coal-fired power units at the Ganneng Fengcheng power station began last July and they were expected to be completed by early 2018, the local Yichun city government said last year.
The expansion was budgeted to cost a total of 7.67-billion yuan (about R15.66-billion), it said.
The main investor for a previous expansion project at the plant suspended trading in its shares on the Shenzhen stock exchange yesterday afternoon, stating that “significant events” that could not be disclosed could impact its share price.
Its shares had fallen 3.41% by midday.
Industrial accidents are common in China, where safety standards are often laxly enforced.
In August, a pipeline explosion at a coal-fired power plant in the neighbouring province of Hubei killed 21.
Earlier this summer, more than 130 people were taken to hospital after chemicals leaked from a plant in eastern China.
In April, a chemical fire burned for 16 hours in the coastal province of Jiangsu after an explosion at a facility storing chemicals and fuel, requiring 400 firefighters to quell the flames.
Last December, the collapse of a gypsum mine in the eastern province of Shandong left one person dead and 13 others unaccounted for, with four miners only rescued after being trapped underground for 36 days.
A total of 19 people had been found responsible for the incident, Xinhua said yesterday, with three managers arrested and 16 other local officials punished.
The agency did not give further details.
The owner of the collapsed mine committed suicide by drowning himself at the scene soon after the collapse, Xinhua said. He will not be subject to criminal liabilities, it cited investigators as saying. — AFP