Tag: Accidents and Safety

Bridge Collapses in Baltimore and Guangzhou Raise Questions on Modern Shipping

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Tuesday’s crash was at least the second in just over a month in which a container ship hit a major road bridge, raising questions about the safety standards of increasingly large ships and the ability of bridges around the world to withstand crashes. On Feb. 22 in Guangzhou, a port in southern China, a much smaller vessel carrying stacks of containers hit the base of a two-lane bridge, causing vehicles to fall. Officials said that five people were killed. The crashes have also raised questions about whether more ships should…

Ship Crash Collapses Part of Bridge in China, Killing at Least 2

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Part of a bridge in the southern Chinese manufacturing hub of Guangzhou collapsed after a container ship crashed into it, killing at least two people as vehicles plummeted, the local authorities said on Thursday. Three people were missing, according to the authorities, who said an empty container ship had hit one of the supporting columns of the two-lane Lixinsha Bridge, fracturing the surface. The crash occurred at about 5:30 a.m. Thursday in the Nansha district, and its cause was under investigation, the district said in a statement. Photos published by…

China Building Fire Kills at Least 39, With Others Trapped

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A fire in a commercial building in southeastern China killed at least 39 people on Wednesday, as emergency workers raced to rescue people still trapped inside. The fire broke out around 3:30 p.m. local time in Xinyu, a city in Jiangxi Province, in the basement of a building that housed an internet cafe on the ground floor and an educational center upstairs, according to Chinese state media and a local government announcement. A video posted on social media by the Communist Party-affiliated outlet Beijing News showed thick black smoke billowing…

China Gym Roof Collapse Claims at Least 11 Lives

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Anger rose in China on Monday following the collapse a day earlier of the roof of a middle school gym near the Siberian border, killing at least 10 members of the school’s trophy-winning girl’s volleyball team who were practicing inside, as well as a coach. School safety has long been an emotional issue in China. The collapse of 7,000 classrooms during the Sichuan earthquake in 2008, which killed as many as 10,000 schoolchildren, triggered a national outcry. Shoddy initial construction of schools, widely described as “tofu” buildings, was widely blamed…

Death Toll in Beijing Hospital Fire Soars to 29

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Chinese authorities said they have arrested a dozen people in connection with a hospital fire in Beijing that has claimed the lives of at least 29 victims, attributing the blaze to possible negligence after sparks from internal construction ignited flammable paint. At a news conference on Wednesday, officials said most of the deceased were patients at Changfeng Hospital when the fire erupted around midday Tuesday in the southwestern part of Beijing. A nurse, a medical worker and a relative of a patient also died in the fire. Another 21 people…

More Than 50 Missing After Coal Mine Collapses in Northern China

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Rescuers in northern China were working on Thursday to save 53 coal miners who were missing after the collapse of an open-pit mine. At least four deaths had been confirmed, local officials and state media said. Footage released by CCTV, the Chinese state broadcaster, showed what appeared to be the moment of the collapse on Wednesday afternoon. As a stream of workers, seen from a distance, are wending through a narrow basin, a landslide occurs, blanketing the area with rock and sand and obscuring the miners from view. More than…

Fire Kills 10 in China’s Xinjiang, Raising Questions About Lockdown

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Ten people were killed and nine injured after a fire broke out in an apartment building in Xinjiang, a far western Chinese region, officials said, where Covid-19 lockdowns have confined many residents to their homes for more than three months. The fire began on the 15th floor of an apartment building in the Jixiangyuan neighborhood of Urumqi, Xinjiang’s capital, on Thursday evening, the city’s Fire Department said. It later rose to engulf the two floors above, with smoke billowing up farther, the department said on its official account on Weibo,…

China Factory Fire Kills 38

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A fire swept through a two-story factory in central China on Monday, killing 38 people in one of the most deadly fires in the country in recent years. According to a statement from local officials, the fire started around 4 p.m. at Kaixinda Trading, a wholesaler that deals in a variety of goods, in Anyang, a city in Henan Province known as a high-tech development zone that was once an ancient Chinese capital. Teams of rescue workers extinguished the fire by around 11 p.m., state media reported. On Tuesday, state…