At least 67 people were killed when part of a power station under construction in China collapsed Thursday, state media reported, the latest industrial accident in a country with a dismal safety record.
A cooling tower platform plunged to the ground in the early hours, trapping an unknown number of people beneath it, the official Xinhua news agency said.
State broadcaster CCTV put the toll at 67, with local reports saying one person was still missing and two others injured.
Pictures of the scene in Fengcheng, in the central province of Jiangxi, showed a grey mass of concrete slabs, steel girders and twisted metal splayed in a heap on the ground inside a large round structure.
Hard-hatted rescue workers in neon jumpsuits carried bodies out from the site on stretchers wrapped in orange sheeting.
A total of 32 fire engines and 212 military personnel had been deployed to the scene, the Jiangxi provincial fire department said on a verified social media account.
The construction of two 1,000-megawatt coal-fired power units at the Ganneng Fengcheng power station began last July and was expected to be completed by early 2018, the local Yichun city government said on a verified social media account last year.
The expansion was budgeted to cost a total of 7.67 billion yuan (now $1.1 billion), it added.
The main investor for a previous expansion project at the plant suspended trading in its shares on the Shenzhen stock exchange Thursday afternoon, stating that “significant events” that could not be disclosed could impact its share price.
Its shares had fallen 3.41 percent by midday.
Industrial accidents are common in China, where safety standards are often laxly enforced.
In August a pipeline explosion at a coal-fired power plant in the neighboring province of Hubei killed 21.
Source: AFP
