A blaze at a locked poultry slaughterhouse in north-east China killed at least 119 people yesterday with several still unaccounted for, officials and state media said, triggering online outrage in a country with a grim record on fire safety.
The fire broke out just after dawn near Dehui in Jilin province. The provincial government said it sent more than 500 firefighters and more than 270 doctors and nurses to the scene, evacuating 3000 people living nearby as a precaution.
More than 300 workers were in the plant at the time, with employees reporting hearing a sudden bang and then seeing dark smoke, Xinhua state news agency said.
It added: "Around 100 workers have managed to escape from the plant whose gate was locked when the fire occurred.
"The complicated interior structure of the prefabricated house in which the fire broke out and the narrow exits have added difficulties to the rescue work."
The exact number of people unaccounted for was unclear, as was the cause of the fire, Xinhua said. The Jilin government said 54 people were injured and had been rushed to hospital.
People took to social media sites to express their anger. "Was this place never regularly inspected by fire safety authorities?" wrote one user on China's popular Twitter-like service Sina Weibo.
"Senior officials need to be sacked because of this," wrote another.
Victims' relatives gathered outside the building to "demand the government investigate and announce the cause of the accident as soon as possible", Xinhua said.
Hong Kong's Phoenix Television cited family members as saying the doors were always kept locked during working hours when workers were forbidden to leave and that the slaughterhouse never carried out fire drills.
China's record is poor. Fire exits in factories are often locked or blocked and regulations can be easily skirted by bribing officials.
Pictures carried by state media showed smoke rising from a long, low-rise building, whose roof had been almost totally burned away, with fire engines and other rescue vehicles parked in front.
Jilin is a largely agricultural province and an major grower of corn and soy beans.
The slaughterhouse is owned by a small local feed and poultry producer called Jilin Baoyuanfeng Poultry Company, according to the government.
A fire at a nightclub in Shenzhen, just across the border from Hong Kong, killed 44 people in 2008. A senior policeman was jailed for taking bribes to allow the unlicensed venue to remain open.
One of modern China's worst fire disasters occurred in late 2000, when fire engulfed building workers at a discotheque in a mall in the central city of Luoyang, killing 309.
The majority of deadly industrial accidents in China happen in the coal-mining industry, in which more than 1300 people died last year.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article