Blast shakes fireworks plant in north-west China

BEIJING — Explosions at a fireworks plant in China’s north-western province of Gansu killed one person and injured six, state media said yesterday. It is the second such event in one day in a country still on edge after massive chemical warehouse explosions in the port city of Tianjin killed at least 158 people last month and exposed lax enforcement of safety regulations.

Two explosions hit the factory, where production was suspended after safety hazards were found during a May inspection, in the city of Longnan, Gansu province, soon after 3pm, the Chinese government’s official news agency, Xinhua, said. Witnesses said the blast also damaged houses close to the plant. In China, residential areas are frequently in close proximity to industrial sites.

Elsewhere, a single “loud” blast occurred at a plant in Shandong province in China’s north-east, state radio said on its Weibo microblog, showing pictures of the explosion in what appeared to be a remote industrial area.

The Dongying News website, which is run by the Dongying city government, said the factory in the province’s Lijin county exploded close to midnight on Monday, and the fire was brought under control about five hours later. Dongying News said six executives of the company that runs the factory of Shandong Binyuan Chemical Company have been detained and that the explosion is under investigation.

The company, located in the Lijin Binhai Economic and Technological Development Zone, says on its website that it can produce 20,000 tonnes of adhesive materials annually. No one was available to comment at the company.

Lijin is 300km from Tianjin, where blasts on Aug 12 at warehouses storing hazardous chemicals killed at least 158 people, most of them firefighters.

The warehouses were closer to homes than is allowed under safety regulations, and they were storing too much hazardous material.

As much as 3,000 tonnes of hazardous chemicals were stored at the warehouse on the night of the explosions in Tianjin, including 700 tonnes of sodium cyanide, deadly in a dose of less than a tablespoon, and 1,300 tonnes of fertiliser nitrates, more than 500 times the amount used in the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing.

The authorities are investigating wrongdoing in permit approvals and regulation of the warehouse company, Ruihai International Logistics, and have held 12 company employees and executives and 11 government officials.

In interviews with Ruihai’s former clients and associates, a picture has emerged of a company that exploited weak governance in one of the Communist Party’s showcase economic districts and used political connections to shield its operations from scrutiny.

Ruihai began handling hazardous chemicals before it obtained a permit to do so, and it secured licences and approvals from at least five local agencies that conducted questionable reviews of its operations. Local authorities outsourced one safety review required for a storage permit to a private contractor that Ruihai selected and paid. AGENCIES