Five people were killed, 33 injured and two others are still
missing following a chemical plant explosion on Sunday in Kunming,
capital of southwestern Yunnan Province, the local government
said.
The injured have been hospitalized and are out of danger. An
official with the city's publicity office told Xinhua that seven
seriously injured people were still in critical condition.
Rescuers were searching for the missing, according to a notice
issued by the Kunming city government.
"Rescuers said that survival chances for the two missing are
very slim," stated an official who declined to give his name.
The explosion took place inside a sulphuric acid plant under the
state-run Yuntianhua International Chemical Industry Co., Ltd., a
leading chemical fertilizer producer in China, at 3:52 a.m. Sunday.
The blast caused a big fire.
Sulphur powder exploded, causing fire while workers were loading
sacks of the chemical in front of a storehouse, investigators from
the city's work safety administration said.
The fire was put out at around 8:00 a.m. on Sunday. Air quality
in the neighborhood of the sulphuric acid plant, which is less than
40 kilometers from the downtown area of Kunming, remained normal,
according to the city's environment protection bureau.
On Sunday afternoon, a great deal of sulphur powder could still
be seen in the messy warehouse when policemen with masks and
helmets were busy investigating at the scene.
Wang Xiaoguang, vice mayor of Kunming, arrived at the site to
supervise the rescue operation and told the city's factories to
conduct thorough safety examinations.
The Kunming city government has set up a task force to
investigate into the cause of the accident and to deal with the
aftermath, said Wang.
Located at Haikou town in Xishan District in the western part of
Kunming, the sulphuric acid plant is run by the Yunnan Sanhuan
Chemical Industry Co., Ltd., a subsidiary of Yuntianhua
International Chemical Industry Co., Ltd. The plant has more than
1,000 employees.
According to Huang Helong, an official with the Yunnan Sanhuan
Chemical Industry Co., Ltd., all the victims were workers of the
plant.
Huang said that the rescue operation had almost finished and the
whereabouts of the two missing workers was still unknown.
Founded in the 1970s, the sulphuric acid plant, which covers
more than 50 hectares, is designed to produce 1.39 million tons of
sulphuric acid and 1.2 million tons of phosphate sulfate fertilizer
annually.
Further investigations into the cause of the incident are
underway.
(Xinhua News Agency January 14, 2008)
