A fallen chimney in Shanghai Wednesday has led to the slight injury of one worker and partial shutdown of a steel plant, due to errors in a directional blasting to dismantle the chimney.
A demolition firm affiliated with Shanghai's Tongji University was employed to dismantle two chimneys at the No.2 steel plant of the Baosteel Group.
The two chimneys stand next to each other, each with a diameter of 2 meters and stands 46 meters high. They have been standing at the plant in Yangpu district in northeast Shanghai for over 30 years.
When the two chimneys fell in two closely timed blasts Wednesday afternoon, one of them hit a nearby warehouse, damaging four pipelines, including a diesel oil pipeline and another for compressed air.
The damage of the two pipelines has led to the partial shutdown of the plant, according to Wang Jiaqi, deputy general manager of the No.2 Steel Plant.
The repair work is still going on, while Wang estimated that production would not fully resume until 7 am Thursday.
The other two pipelines were abandoned a long time ago.
A cameraman with the steel plant was hit by flying debris. Fortunately, he was only slightly injured thanks to his safety hat.
Wang said the fallen chimney was at least 3 meters off the expected line, but technicians of the demolition firm claimed the error is still within the allowance.
According to factory sources, the two chimneys have been the target of complaints from nearby residents for years, as they have been discharging 360 million cubic meters of smoke a year.
The demolition of the chimneys is part of a technical upgrading program that will see the plant switching to the production of products that create little pollution.
(Xinhua News Agency 06/28/2001)
