AN explosion killed 75 people and injured more than 180 others after ripping through a factory in East China’s Jiangsu Province on Saturday morning.

    The blast gutted a wheel hub-polishing workshop owned by the Taiwanese-invested Kunshan Zhongrong Metal Products Co. in Kunshan City at 7:37 a.m., according to the city government.

    There were more than 200 workers at the site when the explosion happened. Among the dead, 44 were immediately killed, and 31 died after medical treatment failed.

    An initial probe indicated that the explosion might have been triggered by a flame that ignited airborne dust inside the workshop, officials said. Two senior executives of the company have been placed in police custody.

    Tragedy

    Video of the scene broadcasted by CCTV showed thick black smoke rising from the factory when the explosion happened. People ran out of the factory with blackened skin and their clothes in tatters. A citizen near the factory said there was a huge sound, and “the door was blown open.”

    Photographs circulated on social networking sites showed charred bodies of victims on trucks or lying on the ground as black smoke billowed from the factory.

    Xinhua reporters at the scene said the blast left two large holes in the factory’s wall, with large equipment and pieces of broken glass scattered around.

    Crowds looking for their relatives soon gathered outside the factory. A citizen said he has been calling his wife’s cell phone number since 8 a.m. but still couldn’t reach her.

    A staff member at the Kunshan Hospital of Traditional Chinese Medicine who asked for anonymity said most of the injured suffered burns to their bodies and respiratory systems.

    “Every 10 minutes, an ambulance carrying the injured arrived at our hospital. It’s the weekend, so we’re sort of understaffed and have had to call for backup,” the staff member said.

    A local radio reporter told Xinhua that she saw an injured worker whose clothes and hair were completely burned off and his body was “as black as charcoal.”

    Of the 186 people injured in the blast, 137 were transferred to hospitals in nearby cities.

    Most of the victims suffered burns to more than 90 percent of their bodies. Even the victims with the lightest wounds have lost 50 percent of their skin, the department said.

    Many burn specialists, including some from Beijing, Shanghai and Nanjing, have hurried to Kunshan to help.

    Local residents lined up outside the city’s blood banks after the Kunshan branch of the Red Cross Society of China reported a blood shortage.

    Family members were anxiously waiting outside the plant for news about their loved ones. A woman told the China News Service that she lost contact with her husband, 45, who is an employee at the factory.

    Company in doubts

    Established in 1998, Kunshan Zhongrong mainly produces automobile parts. Its website said the company has 450 employees and listed General Motors as a client.

    It is located in Kunshan’s economic and technological development zone, which is 70 kilometers away from Shanghai. The largely industrial city of Kunshan and other cities in Jiangsu Province are home to many Taiwanese companies.

    The blast has draped the company in doubts as to whether it had taken enough precautions to protect its employees.

    Cheng, who was a former employee of Zhongrong, said working conditions at the factory were “the worst” in Kunshan’s industrial development zone.

    “In the dusty environment, the only protections workers have are a mask and gloves. The air-filtering equipment is useless,” he said.

    Workers at Zhongrong could earn 5,000 yuan (US$830) per month, high pay compared with neighboring factories.

    But Cheng said many of his former workmates quit within three months because they couldn’t stand the dusty environment and heavy workload.

    “Night shifts are very common, and overtime on weekends is routine. Workers are covered with aluminum powder. They look like terracotta warriors,” Cheng said.

    “We had 20 to 30 new employees joining us every day, and no one was given any safety training.”

    Cheng said there was a fire several months ago at the same factory, but it didn’t attract attention.

    Workers have posted comments online saying they have suffered from the effects of dust in their lungs, but after they complained, production continued as usual.

    “For years, we’ve received baskets of notices and supervisory reports from various levels, but everything remains the same. No one has ever taken any action,” an employee at Zhongrong, who declined to be named, told Beijing News.

    A number of enterprises, including Foxconn Technology Group in Kunshan, have suspended work for safety checks, said Zhang Jun, director of the Kunshan Administration of Work Safety. Production will resume based on the results of the checks, China News Service reported.

    Chen Mengmeng, head of Jiangsu’s provincial environmental protection department said the blast has not caused a “big impact” on the environment, but they had been conducting real-time monitors on air and water around the plant.

    Loopholes

    Dust explosions can occur when any combustible dust suspended in the air at a high concentration meets an ignition source. The dust explosion at the Kunshan factory was not the first such case.

    On Aug. 5, 2012, a dust explosion at an aluminum lock polishing workshop in East China’s Wenzhou City, Zhejiang Province, killed 13 people and injured another 15.

    On March 11, 2009, the residual of aluminum powder in an abandoned factory in Danyang City, Jiangsu Province, exploded after a subsidiary of China Railway Construction Corporation Limited rented the place for workers’ housing. The accident killed 11 people and injured another 20.

    Experts called for intensified measures at factories to prevent similar accidents. “Dust suspended in the air in the right concentration can cause explosions. Even a material that does not normally burn in large pieces, such as aluminum, becomes explosive in certain conditions when it’s suspended in powder form,” said Wu Chunping, a senior engineer at Beijing General Research Institute of Mining and Metallurgy.

    “Generally speaking, for those workshops with high dust concentrations, precautionary measures are the key. Explosions can happen in a few milliseconds,” Wu said. “Factories should put dust-monitoring equipment in their workshops to monitor the density.”

    Wu added that multiple explosions could have occurred in rapid succession after the first blast because the whole workplace would have been filled with aluminum particles. Also, hot aluminum particles in the air could ignite workers’ clothes, he said.

    To tackle the potential danger of aluminum and magnesium related factories, the State Production Safety Committee has launched a three and a half month campaign to straighten up irregularities.

    But the safety production rules are poorly enforced, according to a worker at Kunshan Zhongrong who requested anonymity.

    “Checks are usual, but after the checks, no one really follows any safety rules,” the worker said.

    Some residents near the Kunshan factory expressed their concerns. One said, “There are lots of factories around us; we are really afraid to be honest. The regulators come and go, but are they really doing their jobs?” (Xinhua-Agencies)