Indonesia death toll climbs to 18 in blast at nickel plant
PALU, Indonesia — The death toll from the explosion of a smelting furnace at a Chinese-owned nickel plant on Indonesia’s Sulawesi Island rose to 18 Tuesday, and police ordered the plant to stop operations until an investigation is completed.
The blast, which occurred Sunday, is the latest in a series of fatalities at nickel smelting plants in Indonesia that are part of China’s ambitious transnational development program known as the Belt and Road Initiative.
Nickel is a key component in global battery production for electric vehicles.
Four Chinese and nine Indonesian workers died instantly Sunday when the furnace exploded while they were repairing it, Central Sulawesi police chief Agus Nugroho said. Three more people died a day later while being treated at a local hospital.
Two more workers died Tuesday while hospitalized, bringing the total number of fatalities to 18, including eight workers from China, said Deddy Kurniawan, a spokesperson for PT Indonesia Morowali Industrial Park, the parent company of PT Indonesia Tsingshan Stainless Steel, where the explosion occurred.
“We have ordered PT Indonesia Tsingshan Stainless Steel to stop its operation until our entire investigation is completed,” said Nugroho, the police chief, adding that authorities had set up a team to determine whether negligence by the company led to the deaths.
The blast was so powerful that it demolished the furnace and damaged parts of the side walls of the building, Nugroho said.
The head of central Sulawesi’s manpower and transmigration office, Arnold Firdaus, said the joint investigation team is made up of 18 people, and it includes officials from the central government in Jakarta and a working group from the Chinese Embassy.
PT Indonesia Morowali Industrial Park said in a statement Sunday that the furnace was under maintenance and not operating at the time of the explosion.
However, “residual slag in the furnace” came into contact “with flammable items,” causing the furnace walls to collapse and the remaining steel slag to flow out, the company statement said.
Forty-one workers with serious to minor injuries, including 11 Chinese nationals, were still being treated at a hospital and the company’s clinic Tuesday. Three who suffered serious burns will be flown to China for further treatment, Kurniawan said.
It was the third deadly incident this year at Chinese-owned nickel smelting plants in Central Sulawesi province, which has the largest nickel reserves in Indonesia.
Two dump truck operators were killed when they were engulfed by a wall of black sludge-like material following the collapse of a nickel waste disposal site in April.
In January, two workers, including a Chinese national, were killed in riots that involved workers of the two nations at an Indonesia-China joint venture in neighboring North Morowali.