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Dozens dead in China after power station collapse

Updated - 10:07 More than 60 people are now believed to have died after scaffolding collapsed on ...
Newstalk
Newstalk

08.57 24 Nov 2016


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Dozens dead in China after pow...

Dozens dead in China after power station collapse

Newstalk
Newstalk

08.57 24 Nov 2016


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Updated - 10:07

More than 60 people are now believed to have died after scaffolding collapsed on a building site in China.

A platform on a power station cooling tower came down in the east of the country, leaving a number of people reportedly trapped at the scene.

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An official with the local Work Safety Administration put the confirmed death toll at 22 but the official Xinhua News Agency said that figure had risen to at least 40 by midday.

Jiangxi province's fire services said 32 fire trucks and 212 soldiers had been deployed.

A total of 68 people were at the construction site at the time of the accident, according to local state media.

Television footage and photographs from the site showed iron pipes and wooden planks strewn across the floor of the massive concrete cooling tower.

China has suffered a series of major industrial accidents over recent months blamed on corruption, disregard for safety and pressure to boost production amid a slowing economy. 

A gas explosion at a mine in Chongqing earlier this month killed 13 people.

The head of a logistics company was recently handed a suspended death sentence over a massive explosion at an illegal chemical warehouse in the northern port of Tianjin last year that killed 173 people, most of them firefighters and police officers.

In June 2015, 442 people were killed in the capsize on the Yangtze River of a modified cruise ship blamed on poor decisions made by the captain and crew, while 81 people were killed in December when an enormous, man-made mountain of soil and waste collapsed on nearly three dozen buildings in the southern manufacturing center of Shenzhen.


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