Fires and explosions

Citation

(2007), "Fires and explosions", Disaster Prevention and Management, Vol. 16 No. 4. https://doi.org/10.1108/dpm.2007.07316dac.005

Fires and explosions

23 December 2005 Construction Site, Sichuan Province, China

A gas blast at a construction site in China’s southwestern province of Sichuan has killed at least 42 people, state media said today. Eleven were injured in the explosion yesterday in a highway tunnel under construction between the cities of Dujiangyan and Wenchuan. Most of the victims were construction workers, the report said. The exact number of casualties was unclear, with search and rescue operations still under way.

25 December 2005 Coal Mine, Guizhou Province, China

Twelve miners are trapped after a fire broke out in a coal mine in southwest China’s Guizhou province, state media said today. The fire began at about 23:20, yesterday at the Xiangshui Coal Mine located in Panxian county of Liupanshui City, Xinhua news agency quoted the Guizhou Provincial Coal Mine Safety Bureau as saying. Firemen rushed to the scene to attempt to rescue the men but have not been successful. Flames gushed out of the mineshaft, keeping rescuers at least 20 m away, Xinhua said. Experts are studying how to put out the fire. The coalmine, which can produce four million tons of coal a year, is affiliated with the Pannan Power Plant in the county. The cause of the fire is not yet known.

27 December 2005 Premises, Ciudad Guayana, Venezuela

Rescue workers in Venezuela today wound up their search at the site of a fireworks blast and fire that killed 13 people. The explosion at a fireworks and munitions shop in a busy commercial district of Ciudad Guayana in Bolivar state Monday (December 26) sparked a fire which destroyed several other shops. It took firefighters 12 hours to control the fire and then hours more to cool off the rubble to prevent further blasts. “We no longer have any reports of missing people,” Civil Protection Agency Director Antonio Rivero said, adding that he did not expect to find any more bodies. Rescuers found a 13th charred corpse today, adding to yesterday’s reported toll of 12. Five people were injured. Authorities said police had to intervene at one point to prevent the looting of the gun store and other shops in the area. Fire-fighters and those rescued from the area also had to be treated for possible poisoning by mercury, which was suspected to have been shop, Rivero said. State news agency ABN had quoted a senior firefighter as saying one of the employees had apparently lit a sparkler in the shop, causing the explosion. The Prosecutor General’s office said in a statement today that the store owner was being questioned. Police searched a warehouse where he stored more fireworks, which they suspect he did not have a license to sell. – Reuters.

28 December 2005

An explosion at an armoury in Venezuela yesterday left at least 12 people dead, local media reports say. Twenty-eight people are still unaccounted for. At least two of the victims are reported to be children. It is believed the blast originated in a box of fireworks. Parts of the shop in San Felix, in the eastern state of Bolivar, are still on fire. The rescue effort has been hampered by the large amounts of explosives and gunpowder stored in the shop. Firefighters believe there are more bodies in parts of the Commercial Marquez shop they have not been able to access. The blaze also spread to neighbouring shops and cars.

26 December 2006 Premises, Zhongshan, China

A fire gutted a bar in south China yesterday, killing at least 26 people and injuring another eight, residents and state media said today. Firefighters rushed to the scene and put out the blaze, which broke out shortly before midnight yesterday at Tandao bar in Zhongshan, a city in Guangdong province, the media said. A police officer in Tanzhou township ruled out media speculation that arson was the cause of the fire, but declined further comment. “Witnesses said disco lights fell to the ground and exploded after the boss handed out Christmas gifts,” a resident who lives nearby said. Police sealed off the street, where the bar occupied the first two storeys of a building, another resident said. “We’ve heard lots of rumours. Some said it was disco lights. Others said it was a gas pipe,” he added.

2 January 2006 Coal Mine, West Virginia, USA

An explosion at a coalmine in West Virginia trapped 13 miners more than a mile underground, a county emergency official said today. The explosion happened about 0800 hrs at the Sago Mine in Upshur County, said Steve Milligan, deputy director of the county’s Office of Emergency Management. Six miners made it out of the mine. The trapped miners’ condition was not immediately known as an attempt by co-workers to reach them was unsuccessful, Milligan said. “They essentially came to a wall,” Milligan said. “So they can’t get to them at this time.” The miners were one to two miles underground, he said. A specially trained mine rescue team was being sent to the scene. The mine, in north-central West Virginia, about 100 miles from Charleston, is owned by Anker West Virginia Mining Co.

4 January 2006

Only one of the 12 trapped miners found in a US coal mine today has survived, company officials say. The company chief said that only one man, critically ill and rushed to hospital, had been found alive by rescuers, just hours after all were reported safe. The company named the survivor as 26-year-old Randal McCloy Junior. Relatives had celebrated in churches after reports that the rescue attempts had found all 12 men alive in an air pocket in the mine. Ben Hatfield, president of mine operators International Coal Group, said: “We are incredibly saddened by the horrific loss.” “This is certainly not the outcome we had hoped for and prayed for,” he said. He said earlier news that the 12 men had been found alive was “bad information”. He said he believed the men had survived the explosion and gone to what they thought was a safe area. They are then thought to have been poisoned by toxic fumes. The cause of the blast is not yet known.

6 January 2006

Federal investigators today swarmed the coal mine where an explosion left 12 workers dead, supervising the drilling of ventilation holes to allow safe inspections of the tunnel where the miners died. The work to rid Sago Mine of enough potential explosives and noxious gases may take several days, said Ben Hatfield, chief executive of the International Coal Group. “The foremost concern throughout this process has been that there are so many things we don’t know about what went wrong,” Hatfield said. “We don’t want to put any more people at risk until we know answers.” The Mine Safety and Health Administration has appointed an eight-person team to investigate Monday’s (January 2) blast that killed one miner immediately and left a dozen more trapped more than two miles inside the mine. Only one was alive when they were found 41 hours later behind a plastic curtain erected to block deadly carbon monoxide. In addition to investigating possible causes, including lightning that may have ignited naturally occurring methane or coal dust, MSHA said the probe will also look into the mistaken communication from rescue teams that had anxious relatives believing for three hours that 12 of the trapped miners had survived. The lone survivor, 26-year-old Randal McCloy Jr, was blinking his eyes and showing other hopeful signs today at the Pittsburgh hospital where he was moved a day earlier to receive intense hyperbaric oxygen treatments. However, doctors cautioned he was still critically ill from extensive carbon monoxide poisoning and remained in a medically induced coma. ICG’s Hatfield said the Sago Mine would remain closed during the investigation, and the company was trying to find temporary jobs elsewhere for the site’s 145 employees. The federal mine agency said it cited the Sago mine for 208 violations in 2005, a number an agency official said was higher than normal for a mine of its size. The violations included 18 orders shutting parts of the mine until alleged violations were corrected. None was deemed serious enough to close the entire operation.

7 January 2006 Hostel, Mecca, Saudi Arabia

Saudi authorities have given up the hunt for survivors from the collapse of a hostel in the holy city of Mecca that killed 76 people, the latest tragedy to strike the Muslim Hajj or pilgrimage. Interior minister Prince Nayef Bin Abdel Aziz was due to discuss the tragedy in an emergency meeting today, the eve of the start of the annual pilgrimage to Mecca, the holiest site in Islam. Ministry spokesman General Mansour Al Turki said 76 people were killed and 62 others wounded when the aging and overcrowded multi-storey building collapsed on January 5. He said the dead consisted of 48 men and 28 women. “Saudis, French nationals of Arab origin and Yemenis are among the dead,” he said, adding that 40 bodies had yet to be identified. Health ministry spokesman Khaled Al Mirghalani said that “one or two at most [of the identified dead] are French citizens,” adding that Malaysians were also among the dead. Jordan said five of its nationals had died and officials in France said seven Algerians living in France were among the victims. The United Arab Emirates announced also the death of three of its nationals, while two remain missing. The death toll has not changed since late yesterday, senior health official in Mecca Khaled Al Samiri said. He also boasted that the 9,600-strong ministry’s mobilised staff of doctors and medics were ready for any arising emergency. Emergency teams armed with sound-detecting gear had worked frantically since January 5 to try to locate survivors in the wreckage of the building which an official charged was overcrowded. “Through our inspection of the site, there was a clear indication that the building was overloaded,” regional civil defence director General Adel Zamzami said. Turki also cast doubt on the soundness of the structure, claiming that some additions to the Luluat Al Kheir hostel might have been made illegally. A planning engineer who worked on installing mobile telecommunication towers in the area said it was an “additional structure that caved in, leading to the complete collapse of the building. Survivors recounted the horror of the tragedy as they lay in the city’s hospitals.

16 January 2006 Office Building, Vladivostok, Russia

At least eight people died and 15 others were injured when fire engulfed an office building in Russia’s Pacific port city Vladivostok early today, an official with the emergencies ministry’s local office said. The toll is “preliminary, as (firemen) are still in the process of putting the fire out, and, when it is over, new casualties may be discovered,” he added. The blaze broke out at 05:00, Moscow time, on the eighth floor of a nine-storied building that houses a bank and numerous offices, a spokesman for the local office of the emergencies ministry said. The cause of the fire was unknown. It spread rapidly throughout the building, cutting people off from emergency exits, and many of those who died were killed when they threw themselves out of windows in an attempt to escape the inferno, the ministry official said. Others were luckier and could be evacuated from the building with the help of ladders. Later, RIA-Novosti said, quoting emergency officials, that the fire had been contained. According to preliminary information, the fire killed from eight to ten people, RIA said. Several people were taken to hospital with burns.

29 January 2006 Firecracker Warehouse, Linqi, Henan Province, China

An explosion in a firecracker warehouse killed 16 people in central China today, Chinese New Year, the official Xinhua news agency said. The firecrackers were ignited by fireworks, it added. The victims had all been attending a temple fair nearby in Linqi town, Henan Province, and were killed on the spot. A number of injured were taken to hospital, Xinhua said. China marked the start of the Lunar New Year today, with many people setting off fireworks and firecrackers which are believed to scare off evil spirits and attract the god of wealth to people’s doorsteps.

2 February 2006 Mine, Shanxi Province, China

A gas explosion at a Chinese mine has killed at least 23 miners, state media reported today, in the latest accident to hit the world’s deadliest mining industry. Another 53 people were “sickened” by the blast that happened yesterday in the northern province of Shanxi, the official Xinhua news agency said, without giving details.

8 February 2006 Premises, Kurchaloi, Chechnya, Russia

A total of 12 people were killed when a military barracks collapsed in Russia’s turbulent Chechnya region yesterday after what appeared to be a domestic gas explosion, local officials said today. Valery Kuznetsov, a top local justice official, was quoted by RIA news agency as saying 22 people were injured when the two-storey building at Kurchaloi, about 100 km from the regional capital, Grozny, came down after the blast. A fire that followed the explosion was brought under control and the scene of the blast was cordoned off. Soldiers helped emergency services well into the night to remove chunks of rubble trapping colleagues. “We have now finished recovering dead and injured from the ruins. The figures we now have are the final ones,” Kuznetsov said.

1.14 14 February 2006 Coal Mine, Tangshan, Hebei Province, China

Compensation totalling 24.8 million yuan (US$3.1 million) has been given to all the families of the victims of a coal mine blast in northern China over two months ago, which killed 108 miners and injured 29 others. The money was paid by the management of the Liuguantun colliery in Hebei Province, in line with the rules and regulations on mine accidents, reported the rescue operation headquarters today. The gas explosion happened at the Liuguantun Coal Mine in Kaiping District of Tangshan City at 15:30 hrs, December 7, when more than 100 miners were working there. The exact number is known. Of the injured, 23 have recovered, but six are still hospitalized. The gas blast was an exceedingly grave accident caused by “illegal operation”, Li Yizhong, director of the State Administration of Work Safety, said. The official has promised to take “resolute measures” to deal with the grim situation of coal mine safety, including enhancing supervision and standardising coal mine resources.

15 February 2006 Nightclub, West Warwick, Rhode Island, USA

People affected by a deadly nightclub fire added dozens of new defendants to a lawsuit today, including members of the band whose pyrotechnics sparked the blaze and manufacturers of flammable foam that fed the flames. The new defendants were added to a complaint filed in 2004 on behalf of people including survivors of the fire and relatives of those killed. The nearly 270 plaintiffs allege negligence and carelessness led to the deaths and injuries in the 2003 blaze at the Station in West Warwick, Rhode Island. The lawsuit alleges that members of the band Great White – David Felice, Eric Powers, Mark Kendall and Jack Russell – helped with the pyrotechnics show but failed to get the required permit. The blaze began when sparks from the pyrotechnics ignited soundproofing foam around the stage. It killed 100 people and injured more than 200. Also named in the suit is Aram DerManouelian, president of American Foam Corp, which sold the flammable foam to the club owners. He is accused of discouraging employees from telling prospective customers about the potential hazards. The new lawsuit also names companies accused of manufacturing the flammable foam and insurance companies that allegedly failed to adequately inspect the club. The new suit also accuses The Home Depot of selling insulation to the club without warning of its potential hazards. That material is different from the foam ignited by the pyrotechnics. “The Home Depot intends to defend itself vigorously in the lawsuit,” spokesman Jerry Shields said. “The company is proud of its longstanding history of providing safe products for its customers.” The initial complaint named roughly four-dozen defendants, including club owners Jeffrey and Michael Derderian and former Great White tour manager Daniel Biechele. Biechele pleaded guilty this month to 100 counts of involuntary manslaughter for lighting the pyrotechnics. The Derderians were also charged in a criminal indictment and have pleaded not guilty. The third anniversary of the February 20, 2003, blaze is the statute of limitations for bringing a claim, said Steven Minicucci, a lawyer for the plaintiffs. The suit did not specify how much the plaintiffs were seeking in damages.