The death toll from a huge explosion that rocked a gas plant in central China rose to 12, state media said yesterday, with three people still missing.
Friday’s blast at the Henan Coal Gas (Group) Co (河南省煤氣集團) factory left another 13 people seriously wounded and more with light injuries, Xinhua news agency said.
The blast occurred in the air separation unit of Henan Coal’s factory, state broadcaster China Central Television (CCTV) said, with Xinhua saying a device in the factory exploded at 5:45pm on Friday. All production at the plant had been stopped.
Photo: AFP
More than 270 rescuers were on the scene searching for the missing people, Xinhua said, citing the Chinese Ministry of Emergency Management.
“Many windows and doors within a 3km radius were shattered, and some interior doors were also blown out by the blast,” CCTV said on a Chinese microblogging site.
Local media showed amateur videos of a massive column of black smoke billowing from the factory and debris littering the roads.
Other images showed the doors and windows of homes blown out, and shuttered shops with dented metal fronts.
A bloodied man was seen being helped out of a van in a video shared on social media.
The authenticity of the footage could not be immediately verified.
Deadly industrial accidents are common in China, where safety regulations are often poorly enforced.
In March, a blast at a chemical plant in eastern Jiangsu Province killed 78 people and injured hundreds.
The powerful explosion in the eastern city of Yancheng toppled several buildings in an industrial park, blew out windows of nearby homes and even dented metal garage doors.
Authorities detained two dozen people in connection with the blast, which prompted the government to order a nationwide inspection of chemical firms.
A week after that explosion, seven people died following a blast at an electronics component manufacturer in the same province.
In November last year, a gas leak at a plant in the northern city of Zhangjiakou — which is to host the 2022 Winter Olympics — killed 24 people and injured 21 others.
Leaked chloroethylene came into contact with a fire source causing the explosion, authorities said in a report in February.
DEMOGRAPHICS: Robotics is the most promising answer to looming labor woes, the long-term care system and national contingency response, an official said Taiwan is to launch a five-year plan to boost the robotics industry in a bid to address labor shortages stemming from a declining and aging population, the Executive Yuan said yesterday. The government approved the initiative, dubbed the Smart Robotics Industry Promotion Plan, via executive order, senior officials told a post-Cabinet meeting news conference in Taipei. Taiwan’s population decline would strain the economy and the nation’s ability to care for vulnerable and elderly people, said Peter Hong (洪樂文), who heads the National Science and Technology Council’s (NSTC) Department of Engineering and Technologies. Projections show that the proportion of Taiwanese 65 or older would
Nvidia Corp yesterday unveiled its new high-speed interconnect technology, NVLink Fusion, with Taiwanese application-specific IC (ASIC) designers Alchip Technologies Ltd (世芯) and MediaTek Inc (聯發科) among the first to adopt the technology to help build semi-custom artificial intelligence (AI) infrastructure for hyperscalers. Nvidia has opened its technology to outside users, as hyperscalers and cloud service providers are building their own cost-effective AI chips, or accelerators, used in AI servers by leveraging ASIC firms’ designing capabilities to reduce their dependence on Nvidia. Previously, NVLink technology was only available for Nvidia’s own AI platform. “NVLink Fusion opens Nvidia’s AI platform and rich ecosystem for
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) yesterday said it is building nine new advanced wafer manufacturing and packaging factories this year, accelerating its expansion amid strong demand for high-performance computing (HPC) and artificial intelligence (AI) applications. The chipmaker built on average five factories per year from 2021 to last year and three from 2017 to 2020, TSMC vice president of advanced technology and mask engineering T.S. Chang (張宗生) said at the company’s annual technology symposium in Hsinchu City. “We are quickening our pace even faster in 2025. We plan to build nine new factories, including eight wafer fabrication plants and one advanced
‘WORLD’S LOSS’: Taiwan’s exclusion robs the world of the benefits it could get from one of the foremost practitioners of disease prevention and public health, Minister Chiu said Taiwan should be allowed to join the World Health Assembly (WHA) as an irreplaceable contributor to global health and disease prevention efforts, Minister of Foreign Affairs Lin Chia-lung (林佳龍) said yesterday. He made the comment at a news conference in Taipei, hours before a Taiwanese delegation was to depart for Geneva, Switzerland, seeking to meet with foreign representatives for a bilateral meeting on the sidelines of the WHA, the WHO’s annual decisionmaking meeting, which would be held from Monday next week to May 27. As of yesterday, Taiwan had yet to receive an invitation. Taiwan has much to offer to the international community’s
RSS