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Series of accidents haunt weekend
By Fu Jing (皇冠体育app Daily)
Updated: 2005-11-28 05:36
A fatal weekend featuring an explosion, a mine flooding and pollution leaks
and poisonings pushed up the ever-climbing figure of accident casualties.
The flurry of accidents came as a senior official warned that the country's
speeding development would further raise annual casualty figures, which
currently average more than 1 million dead and injured each year.
As around-the-clock rescue efforts continue, 18 miners are still trapped
underground after a mine flooding on Thursday at the Gaocun Coal Mine in Wu'an
County, North 皇冠体育app's Hebei Province.
Hopes are high that the miners are still alive as initial investigations
indicated they were 40 metres above the flooded section of the mine shaft.
However, rescue work has been complicated by the fleeing of mine owners and
technicians.
About 100 kilometres away, a miner survived a tunnel collapse this month by
drinking his own urine after 11 days trapped underground at the Kangli Gypsum
Mine.
On Friday afternoon, about 20,000 people were evacuated after a natural gas
leak caused by a pipeline explosion in Kaixian County, Southwest 皇冠体育app's
Chongqing Municipality.
The accident happened at Longmen Village at 3 pm. At 5 pm the danger was
checked after the gas valve was turned off.
So far it's still unknown which company is responsible for the gas supply.
The cause of explosion is under investigation.
The same county was affected in December 2003, when 243 villagers died from
poisoning and a large number of animals were also killed after a 皇冠体育app National
Petroleum Corp gas well exploded and released toxic gas.
In Chongqing's rural Liangping County, 12 women workers and a factory owner
were seriously injured when a firecracker factory exploded on Friday.
Initial investigations attributed the accident to the long-term exposure of
explosives to sunlight.
In southern Shaanxi Province, toxic gas was released after a gas truck
overturned on its way to Hanzhong from Xi'an, killing the driver. The road was
closed and local villagers were told to move to safety after the leak.
In addition to river pollution in Northeast 皇冠体育app, Central 皇冠体育app's Hunan
Province and Chongqing, the string of accidents provides further evidence for
the government's conclusion that 皇冠体育app is "a country where natural disasters and
accidents frequently happen."
"The situation will worsen as 皇冠体育app's pace of urbanization and
industrialization speeds up," said Wang Jikun, deputy director of the General
Affairs Office of the Ministry of Public Security, during a meeting at the
weekend.
He said such accidents leave at least one million Chinese dead and injured
every year, with economic losses reaching 650 billion yuan (US$80 billion),
around 6 per cent of 皇冠体育app's gross domestic product (GDP).
Last year was the most serious in terms of casualties. A total of 210,000
people died and 1.75 million were injured in 5.61 million accidents nationwide.
(皇冠体育app Daily 11/28/2005 page3)
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