Results tagged “accidents”

Computers that spontaneously combust are old news, but when a whole bus inexplicably catches fire it catches our attention. Nanfang Daily reported that a shuttle bus on its way to Foshan from Panyu burst into flames on the highway, forcing the driver and thirty seven passengers to evacuate the vehicle. But mere fire wasn't enough to stop the inferno bus: once the passengers and driver evacuated, the bus continued on its way towards Foshan for a full kilometer before finally burning out.

As much as we want the high-speed railway that will shorten the travel time between Shanghai and Beijing to just four hours to be finished, we'd rather it get done a little slower if it means we can prevent the startling amount of worker accidents that have been happening. Most recently, four workers were crushed to death and two others were injured when a 10-ton crane crashed into another crane during a heavy rainstorm. In March, seven workers were buried when the railway construction site in Jiangsu collapsed. Are worker deaths this frequent in other parts of the world too? Source: Shanghai Daily

In another case of a Oceanic hit-and-run in recent weeks, a fishing boat which collided with a ship in the Yangtze River estuary off Shanghai has left one person dead and eight others missing. The boat contained 11 people in total when it rammed against a ship at 3:40am this morning. Three of the passengers were rescued, but a fourth died of serious injuries. The search for the missing is still ongoing. Meanwhile, the vessel that hit the fishing ship has run off and is being pursued by maritime authorities. In late April, a ship modeled after an ancient Chinese junk met an untimely end on its trip across the Pacific after a tanker smashed into it and ran off. Source: Xinhua

• Boy Killed Anally When Office Chair Explodes [Gizmodo] "Well, stories don't get much worse than this. A 14-year-old boy in China was killed when his chair exploded, sending chunks of metal into his rectum. The bleeding this caused killed him."
• Is anything made in the U.S.A. anymore? You'd be surprised [International Herald Tribune] "The United States remains by far the world's leading manufacturer by value of goods produced. It hit a record $1.6 trillion in 2007 - nearly double the $811 billion of 1987. For every $1 of value produced in China factories, the United States generates $2.50. So what is made in the U.S.A. these days?"
• More than 20 dead in N China coal mine accident [Xinhua] "The accident occurred at about 2: 00 a.m. Sunday at the Tunlan Coal Mine of Shanxi Coking Coal Group in Gujiao City near Taiyuan, the provincial capital, when 436 miners were working underground."

                              

[Monday, 10pm] People are currently aTwitter with news that that Beijing's CCTV headquarters has gone up in flames, and from the following pictures snapped and uploaded by various eyewitnesses (including some amazing on-the-scene photos by real estate tycoon and CEO of Soho China Pan Shiyi), the fire looks pretty damn bad and appears to have engulfed the part of the complex that houses the Mandarin Oriental Hotel Beijing. Given that today is Yuanxiao Jie (元宵节) which marks the culmination of the Lunar New Year festivities, it is not unlikely that stray fireworks were the cause of this disaster. Follow what the China Twitterati is saying at #cctvfire. Videoclips after the jump.

AFP reports:

One person was killed Sunday in a blast near a police post in China's financial hub Shanghai, the state news agency Xinhua reported.

Continue reading "One killed in police post blast on Wuning Nan Lu"

WARNING: This video contains graphic images that may not be suitable for everyone.

Photo from fateless_gypsy

WARNING: This video is not for the faint-hearted.

Following the death of four female students at the Shanghai Business School in Xuhui District, the Shanghai Education Commission has launched an emergency fire safety campaign to be conducted throughout all schools. Students from the dormitory told reporters from the Xinhua News Agency that the fire extinguishers they tried to use were all way past their expiry date and the griefstricken parents are now blaming the college for the death of their daughters. According to Shanghai Daily, an electric heating stick (used to boil water) that was placed on the blanket of one of the girls caused the fire.

Sad news from the Shanghai Daily:

FOUR college students died after falling off the balcony of their six-story dormitory at Shanghai Business School while trying to escape a fire early this morning in Xuhui District, police said.

Continue reading "Four students at Shanghai Business School jump to death to escape from burning dorm room"

A fireworks technician died yesterday in an explosion in Century Park, Pudong — and he wasn't even lighting any fireworks. 26 year old Pu Jiliang from Henan province died on the spot at around 12.30pm when he was loading onto a truck near the gate of the park. Fireworks displays by Russian, Japanese, German and Chinese artists had been scheduled at Century Park for Sept. 30, Oct. 3 and Oct.6 as part of the National Day celebrations. No other casualties have been reported and the police have not furnished more details surrounding Pu's mysterious death.

We were out and about in the rain all of yesterday and had no idea a "mega thunderstorm" was brewing out there in another part of town and people were getting killed in it. According to Xinhua, this was a "once-in-a-century thunderstorm":

A migrant worker was crushed to death and 14 were injured after a thunderstorm hit part of Shanghai on Saturday afternoon, municipal flood authorities said.

Continue reading "Shanghai thunderstorm kills one, injures 14 in Pudong and Nanhui districts"

"The governor of north China's Shanxi province stepped down Sunday over a landslide that killed at least 254, the second time he has fallen from grace over a major scandal."

A bus overturned on a remote mountain road leading to Artux city in Xinjiang province, killing 17 people on the spot while another eight eventually succumbed to their injuries at the hospital. Most of the victims were Han Chinese high school students and some were from the Kirgiz ethnic minority. The cause of the accident is still under investigation but authorities do not suspect any foul play or terrorism involved. [Source]

36 coal miners are still trapped after a mine flooded at about 3.30pm yesterday at the Nadu Mine in the Guangxi region. Rescuers have since saved 13 people after 10 hours and 12 of the 36 still trapped are in contact with rescuers and are in safe places within the mine. These miners are reported to be about 2km from the mouth of the mine and rescuers are struggling to get water and food to them as they continue rescue efforts.

Photo by Ryan Pollack

Fasten your seat belts, this is not a test. Guangzhou Daily brings us this news today that on July 4th, Shanghai Airlines flight FM9105 encountered serious turbulence leaving twenty passengers injured on their flight from Shanghai to Beijing.

Photo from Xinhua

The world's longest sea-bridge from Shanghai to Ningbo opened on schedule (May 1st), cutting travel time to the port city from 4 hours to 150 minutes. However not everything is going according to plan.

Various reports on yesterday's bus explosion in Yangpu District have attributed the cause of the fire to flammable material that one passenger brought onto the bus, but Hong Kong's Apple Daily《苹果日报》has suggested a "suicide-style bombing" (自杀式炸巴士) by Xinjiang terrorist groups. Here's part of the report, as translated by ESWN:

... Even more frightening to the citizens than the casualties at the scene is the vague reporting by the media. The description covered 'self-ignition,' 'ignited explosion (that is, a fire caused by an explosion in the engine),' 'arson' and 'explosion' and this is enough to make one question whether the truth is being concealed. Even more terrifying than the bus being set on fire in an attack is that the Shanghai public security bureau said casually that this was caused by flammable materials brought on by a bus. Even more scary to the outside world is that the authorities could cover up the fact that the train in the Shandong collusion was the Olympic Games special promotion train. If they can seal off the truth about the Shanghai bus and they can seal off the situation about epidemics, what couldn't they not deceive the Chinese people and the rest of the world on?

AFP: Dalai Lama has committed 'monstrous crimes': China's state press

This just in, from Xinhua:

China Daily: Survivors recount pre-dawn nightmare

Video: France24 report of China's fight against piracy.