Wangkou -- China
Explosion at fireworks factory kills 29 

2003 -- Rescuers carry the corpse of the dead away after an explosion ripped through a fireworks factory in Wangkou, North China's Hebei Province Monday July 28, 2003. The blast, taking place at 6:08 p.m. Monday, has killed 29 people and injured 107, China Central Television reports. The main workshops of the factory were also destroyed.

 

 

-- A powerful explosion destroyed a fireworks factory in North China's Hebei Province, killing 29 people and injuring more than 100, Xinhua News Agency reported yesterday.  

Soldiers of the People's Liberation Army clean up the site of an explosion in a fireworks factory in North China's Hebei Province yesterday.

 

The explosion happened at about 6 pm Monday evening in the township of Wangkou. The blast demolished half of a two-storey office building 100 metres away and set fire to cars and motorcycles close to the factory building.

Photographs taken by Xinhua News Agency showed rescue workers in hard hats, complete with motorized shovel combing through the charred rubble of the plant.

Twenty-nine people had been confirmed dead as of yesterday, while rescue workers are still working hard to find missing bodies.

Reports said that more than 100 people were injured in the blast, although only a few cases were considered serious.

"I thought it was an earthquake. I was really scared. My sister and I just ran out of the house,''  a 19-year-old living about 5 kilometres away from the factory, said in a telephone interview with China Central Television.

Another villager,  was working on his farm at the time of the blast.

"I heard three or four explosions in a row and saw black smoke rising in the distance,'' the 40-year-old said.

The explosion was caused by heat-induced ignition of gunpowder,Xinhua quoted local police as saying. The powder exploded due to the hot weather in the last few days, local government officials said.

Reports from Xinhua said the factory was authorized to produce pyrotechnics by the local government in December 2000. It had passed safety inspections from local police departments.

Fatal explosions still occur frequently at China's fireworks factories, despite a safety crackdown launched in early 2002 following a series of high-profile accidents.

The industry employs hundreds of thousands of people, with many working at home or in small factories where most manufacturing is done by hand.

In one of the worst recent cases, 80 people were killed in April 2002 in the northern province of Shaanxi, when a villager set off explosives stored in the house of a business rival.

 

 

Wangkou
Kills 29  Injuring more than 140,

2003 -- Explosions ripped through a fireworks factory in northern China, killing at least 29 people and injuring more than 140, local officials said.

"The fire has been put out, but rescuers are still on the scene searching for survivors and pulling buried bodies out of the wreckage,"

"Some people in the hospitals suffered severe burns, others have lost their limbs."

State media reported that the injured were taken to the three hospitals, as well as to medical facilities in the nearby provincial capital of Shijiazhuang, about 280 km (175 miles) southwest of Beijing.    The blasts took place Monday evening at the Guoxi Fireworks Factory in Wangkou township in northern Hebei province.

"The factory was full at the time with more than 100 people still at work," the fire official said. "There was one big initial blast and several smaller explosions afterwards." "One explosion occurred just after the firefighters arrived and a subsequent one may have wounded or killed some firefighters," he said.

The explosions destroyed the main workshop at the factory, while severely damaging an office building more than 300 feet away, the state-run Xinhua News Agency reported, adding that the cause is still under investigation.

Fatal blasts have been a regular occurrence at China's fireworks factories, many of which are small-scale plants where most of the manufacturing is done by hand.

The privately-run factory received its production permit from local police in December 2000.