Society

Chemical plant blast kills six

By Ma Lie (China Daily)
Updated: 2010-01-09 10:04

XI'AN: Six missing people were confirmed dead on Friday after an explosion at a chemical plant on Thursday afternoon in Lanzhou, capital of Gansu province.

"Six bodies were recovered from the scene," said Li Jiamin, deputy general manager of the Lanzhou Chemical Company of the China National Petroleum Corporation, China's largest oil and gas producer.

Late Friday, one seriously injured person was in critical condition, Li said.

Five with minor injuries were being treated in hospital. Nine more people were being kept in the hospital for observation. All of them are in Lanhua Hospital, Lanzhou.

Some 1,000 firefighters, policemen and workers worked throughout the night and day to extinguish the fire.

"As the fire continued to burn many flammable chemical materials, the flames could not be completely extinguished in a short time," a firefighter said. "We had to control the fire by letting the chemical materials burn out in a controlled manner."

The fire is expected to be completely out by early Saturday morning.

The blast hit at 5:30 pm on Thursday at the plant, which is located about 30 km from the downtown area of the province's capital and about 500 m from the nearest residential communities. Many windows in residential buildings nearby were broken by the blast but no one was reported injured.

According to the on-site command, six tanks containing naphtha in the plant's No 316 tank area exploded and caused a big fire that threatened the 25 liquid hydrocarbon tanks standing nearby.

"Our firefighters and policemen are still making an effort to control the situation," a local firefighter official said.

The water used to control the fire ran off into the sewage system and did not contaminate the surface water resources in the Yellow River passing through the city, the firefighter said.

The environmental monitoring by the provincial environmental protection bureau showed that no toxic gas was emitted.

After the blast, the provincial government sent more than 1 million text messages to local residents' mobile phones, informing them of the accident to quash public emotion and panic.

A preliminary analysis showed that the explosion was caused by a leak of combustible gas from a tank. An investigation is ongoing.