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Industrial explosion in China’s Shaanxi province tears through small town, dozens dead, scores injured


Big News Network.com
25 Oct 2016

SHAANXI, China - In yet another powerful industrial explosion in China, dozens of people lost their lives and scores were injured in the country’s northwestern town of Xinmin in China’s Fugu county in Shaanxi province.

Authorities stated that the explosion on Monday was likely caused by explosives that were being stored illegally in the makeshift building, causing huge craters on the street and devastating a residential complex. 

Fugu County is said to be a base for several large mining companies that require explosives.

China’s state news agency, Xinhua reported that the blast occurred at 2 pm inside the ‘prefabricated house which had been built inside a larger residential compound.’

The report further added that several nearby buildings were damaged in the blast, including the city hospital.  

By Tuesday morning, several images and videos of the devastation caused by the explosion in the town were circulating on the Chinese social media even though most of them were immediately censored. 

According to Free Weibo, the words ‘Shaanxi explosion’ and ‘Shaanxi’ became the most highly censored words on China’s Twitter-like microblog Weibo. State censors were said to be working overnight to limit online conversation regarding the disaster.  

Reports from the region stated that the explosion took place the same day as nearly 300 senior Chinese officials were gathered in Beijing for a closed door meeting of the Communist Party's Sixth Plenum.

After rescue operations ended on Tuesday, officials stated that 14 people died and 147 others were rushed to emergency care, where 11 of them are still said to be battling for life. 

Authorities have detained the owner of the building and a search operation has been launched to find the tenant, who began renting the building in September.

The explosion in Fugu County is the latest in a string of industrial explosions in China. 

Earlier this year, an explosion at a warehouse storing chemicals in Jiangsu province threw open the debate about adherence to safety precautions during construction and workplace safety.

In 2015, another similar deadly explosion blew apart a chemical warehouse in Tianjin near Beijing, killing over 150 people  

According to the State Administration for Work Safety, in the first half of 2015, 13,723 work-related deaths have occurred in China, which equates to 75 deaths a day. However, records showed that the number this year is a 8.1 percent drop from the previous year. 

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