A gas blow-out in southwest China turned an area of 25km2 into a death zone, killing nearly 200 people as they slept or scrambled to escape, government officials and state media said yesterday.
Rescue workers raced to stem the foul-smelling toxic fumes from the natural gas well which was being drilled in mountains 340km northeast of Chongqing city when Tuesday night's disaster occurred.
Xinhua said an operation to cut off the gas planned for yesterday had been postponed for 24 hours. Eighty-two separate rescue teams scoured surrounding villages for survivors. Dozens of fire trucks and ambulances were standing by.
"They have not found any more dead bodies today," a county government official said.
State television showed flames spewing from the well, illuminating fog-shrouded mountains, after the poison gas was deliberately ignited to consume it.
Newspapers showed pictures of children in hospital, their eyes sealed shut by the gas, and of stricken livestock littering the roads.
The Chongqing Morning Post quoted one survivor who lived within 10m of the well, 41-year-old peasant Liao Yong. He described a hissing black mist of gas which chased him as he fled in his farm vehicle -- with more than 20 relatives and neighbors hanging on.
After driving several kilometers, Liao no longer sensed the strange odor of the fumes and stopped his vehicle to look back, the paper said. "But within just minutes, Liao Yong again caught whiff of the smell of stinky duck eggs ... and hastily drove on."
But at least 191 others were killed.
"The poisonous gas hovering in the air made an area of 25km2 a death zone as many villagers were intoxicated by the fumes in their sleep," the China Daily newspaper said.
"Most of the bodies were found at home or by the roadside or in a valley," the county official said by telephone.
"Chickens, horses and pigs were also killed."
About 41,000 people, most of them farmers, were evacuated from villages within a radius of 5km from the remote accident site, where the temperature at night drops to freezing.
About 740 people were still being treated in hospital while outpatients with ailments such as conjunctivitis and other eye problems numbered nearly 10,000, the official said.
The accident was considered to be "the worst [of its kind] in China's history", the China Daily said.
It was the second time in three years that disaster put a damper on China's Christmas, increasingly a day for revelry in big cities.
At least 309 people, many young people at a Christmas Day disco party, were killed when fire swept through a commercial center in the central city of Luoyang in 2000.
It also marred the 110th anniversary of the birth of Communist China's deified late leader, Mao Zedong, on yesterday.
When the well erupted, it spewed a high concentration of natural gas and sulphurated hydrogen 30m into the air.
The fumes spread quickly to nearby areas and caused "mass casualties," the official Xinhua news agency quoted Wu Jianong, vice mayor of Chongqing, as saying, adding that poor communications and transport facilities hampered rescue efforts.
Sulphurated hydrogen is a toxic gas that can poison or kill people who inhale 760 to 1,000 milligrams per cubic meter, Xinhua said. Only after the gas was set ablaze were rescue workers able to enter the area, vice mayor Wu said.
Among the dead were 39 children under 10 and 46 people over 60, Xinhua said. Two of the dead were well workers, the rest farmers and their families.
China has a notoriously poor work safety record. More than 120,000 people died in work-related accidents from January to November this year.
Chongqing and the neighboring province of Sichuan are among China's major natural gas producing areas.
The well where the blow-out occurred is owned by China National Petroleum Corp (CNPC), parent of oil major PetroChina.
In August, PetroChina began construction of a US$400 million pipeline to pump natural gas from Chongqing to central China.
In one of the world's worst industrial disasters, a poisonous gas leak at a Union Carbide plant in India in December 1984 killed 3,000 people. Thousands more died in following years and tens of thousands were left with lifelong illnesses.
Kehinde Sanni spends his days smoothing out dents and repainting scratched bumpers in a modest autobody shop in Lagos. He has never left Nigeria, yet he speaks glowingly of Burkina Faso military leader Ibrahim Traore. “Nigeria needs someone like Ibrahim Traore of Burkina Faso. He is doing well for his country,” Sanni said. His admiration is shaped by a steady stream of viral videos, memes and social media posts — many misleading or outright false — portraying Traore as a fearless reformer who defied Western powers and reclaimed his country’s dignity. The Burkinabe strongman swept into power following a coup in September 2022
‘FRAGMENTING’: British politics have for a long time been dominated by the Labor Party and the Tories, but polls suggest that Reform now poses a significant challenge Hard-right upstarts Reform UK snatched a parliamentary seat from British Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s Labor Party yesterday in local elections that dealt a blow to the UK’s two establishment parties. Reform, led by anti-immigrant firebrand Nigel Farage, won the by-election in Runcorn and Helsby in northwest England by just six votes, as it picked up gains in other localities, including one mayoralty. The group’s strong showing continues momentum it built up at last year’s general election and appears to confirm a trend that the UK is entering an era of multi-party politics. “For the movement, for the party it’s a very, very big
ENTERTAINMENT: Rio officials have a history of organizing massive concerts on Copacabana Beach, with Madonna’s show drawing about 1.6 million fans last year Lady Gaga on Saturday night gave a free concert in front of 2 million fans who poured onto Copacabana Beach in Rio de Janeiro for the biggest show of her career. “Tonight, we’re making history... Thank you for making history with me,” Lady Gaga told a screaming crowd. The Mother Monster, as she is known, started the show at about 10:10pm local time with her 2011 song Bloody Mary. Cries of joy rose from the tightly packed fans who sang and danced shoulder-to-shoulder on the vast stretch of sand. Concert organizers said 2.1 million people attended the show. Lady Gaga
SUPPORT: The Australian prime minister promised to back Kyiv against Russia’s invasion, saying: ‘That’s my government’s position. It was yesterday. It still is’ Left-leaning Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese yesterday basked in his landslide election win, promising a “disciplined, orderly” government to confront cost-of-living pain and tariff turmoil. People clapped as the 62-year-old and his fiancee, Jodie Haydon, who visited his old inner Sydney haunt, Cafe Italia, surrounded by a crowd of jostling photographers and journalists. Albanese’s Labor Party is on course to win at least 83 seats in the 150-member parliament, partial results showed. Opposition leader Peter Dutton’s conservative Liberal-National coalition had just 38 seats, and other parties 12. Another 17 seats were still in doubt. “We will be a disciplined, orderly
RSS