A septic tank was the epicenter of a massive explosion that rocked one of China’s largest port cities on Sunday, killing two people and injuring at least 19, authorities have said.
The blast tore through a crumbling light-industrial area adjacent to crowded residential towers in the city of Ningbo, just south of Shanghai, and was so powerful that it was heard several kilometers away.
The force of the explosion shattered windows in nearby apartments, mangled cars and reduced small buildings at the epicenter to rubble, though locals said the structures were already in poor shape and slated for demolition.
Public security officials “have confirmed that the blast’s epicenter is a septic tank in an empty field,” the local government said in a statement late on Sunday.
Methane and hydrogen sulphide — both highly flammable gases — can build up in septic tanks.
Officials have ruled out a gas explosion or of the blast being intentionally set off by someone.
The statement said in addition to the two fatalities, two people are missing after the explosion. Four people were severely injured and 15 others had minor wounds.
“We were having tea and bwaaaah! It knocked my mother off her stool. It was incredibly loud,” said a local woman who lives about 400m from the blast site and who gave only her surname, Wu.
Authorities had thrown up a cordon around the collapsed buildings and were still investigating the cause of the explosion in Ningbo.
An elderly woman said one of her children was in the area at the time of the blast.
“Yes, we live here and one of my children is still inside [the cordoned-off area] and hasn’t been found yet,” she said, declining to give details.
She dabbed tears with a tissue and repeatedly dialed a number on her phone.
Asked who she was calling, she said: “My child.”
Early yesterday, locals were sweeping up piles of debris and glass at the blast site where rubble was strewn across an area several hundred meters wide. The government said it had received hundreds of reports of damage, such as shattered glass, twisted window frames or damaged cars.
The local government and state media have variously described the site of the explosion as a vacant lot or an abandoned factory.
An Agence France-Presse reporter at the scene said the site appeared to be a run-down former light industrial area.
Residents said some people from outside Ningbo had been squatting there, but others disputed that.
“Most people had left here a long time ago. It was just a wasteland lot,” Wu said.
She said most structures in the blast area had been crumbling for some time,and that not all the rubble seen was caused by the explosion.
Another local man, who declined to give his name, said: “It’s lucky that more people did not die, but no one was living here anymore.”
China has been rocked by several industrial accidents in recent years.
In 2015, giant chemical blasts in a container storage facility killed at least 165 people in the northern port city of Tianjin.
The explosions caused more than US$1 billion in damage and sparked widespread anger at a perceived lack of transparency over the accident’s causes and its environmental impact.
A government inquiry eventually recommended 123 people be punished. Tianjin’s mayor at the time of the accident was sentenced to 12 years in prison for graft in September.
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