Fires and explosion

Citation

(2001), "Fires and explosion", Disaster Prevention and Management, Vol. 10 No. 1. https://doi.org/10.1108/dpm.2001.07310aac.005

Fires and explosion

Fires and explosion

10 March 2000 – Tuvalu

Fire swept through a locked dormitory at a school in Tuvalu overnight, killing 17 students and a matron, the country's prime minister said today. The fire was believed to have been caused by a student's candle which sparked an inferno in the school's sleeping quarters. The victims, girls between the ages of 14 and 17, were all locked inside their dormitory at the school last night when the fire began. The matron died as she attempted to battle past the flames to free the girls, Radio Tuvalu said. "The girls were in the dormitory, were trying to escape from the fire but could not because all the doors were locked," the radio said. The girls were in their Toalipi Girls dormitory at the Motufoua Secondary School when the fire broke out.

11 March 2000 – Luhansk Area, Ukraine

At least 80 miners were killed and seven injured when a methane gas explosion ripped through a coal mine in Ukraine today. Officials said it was the ex-Soviet state's worst mining disaster since independence in 1991. "According to the latest figures, 80 people have died and seven have been injured and sent to the clinic…four with burns," Emergencies Ministry spokesman Oleh Bykov said. An explosion in the nearby Donetsk region killed 63 miners two years ago. Bykov said 9l miners had been working in the area of the blast in the Barakova mine, in Ukraine's eastern Luhansk region, and that the death toll could rise. In all, 227 men had been working underground throughout the huge mine. Rescue workers said coal dust might have increased the deadliness of the explosion, which Bykov said happened around 13.35, local time, (11.35, UTC) at a depth of 664 metres.

13 March 2000 – Rescue crews today retrieved the last of 81 people killed in a methane explosion in an eastern Ukrainian coal mine. It was the worst mine disaster in the former Soviet republic in decades. At least eight miners were taken alive from the shaft after yesterday's blast and hospitalised with burns. One died today. Nearly 200 miners escaped the shaft safely after the explosion, which happened at a depth of 2,191 feet. The 80 other workers in the mine at the time were killed, the Emergency Situations Ministry said. A preliminary investigation suggested that safety violations led to the accident yesterday at the Barakova mine in Krasnodon, about 530 miles east of Kiev, the Interfax news agency quoted President Leonid Kuchma as saying. Ukraine has the world's highest coal industry death rate, blamed largely on outdated and badly functioning equipment and the neglect of safety rules by miners. Its mine accidents are often caused by methane. A total of 33 rescue units worked through the night at the site, and dragged up the last of the bodies today. Kuchma said the government has already sent $1.8 million to help the families of those killed in the mine. He decreed that tomorrow and Tuesday (March 14) would be nation-wide days of mourning. A special government commission, which included Labour Minister Ivan Sakhan, Energy Minister Serhiy Tulub and local authorities representatives, started investigation today on possible causes of the accident. Prime Minister Viktor Yushchenko, who heads the commission, will arrive in the region tomorrow, Interfax said.

13 March 2000 – Pingxiang, Jiangxi Province, China

An explosion at a private unlicensed fireworks factory in Jiangxi killed 33 people and injured ten others, official media reported yesterday. Two of those hurt in the explosion Saturday (March 11) in Pingxiang City, Jiangxi Province, were in serious condition. Xinhua said one of the owners, Shen Shenglin, died in the morning blast. A spokesman for the Pingxiang fire brigade said an investigation was continuing. Xinhua said the provincial Government had dispatched a team to take charge of the investigation. It said the factory had operated without a licence for five years.

22 March 2000 – Leninsk-Kuznetsky, Russia

Reports from Russia say there has been a gas explosion in a coal mine in the Siberian town of Leninsk-Kuznetsky in the Kemerovo region. The ITAR-TASS news agency says 12 people died in the accident. All the victims were rescue workers trying to contain the blaze. More than 400 miners had been evacuated from the pit before the explosion took place. Preliminary reports suggest the blast was caused by errors in operating the ventilation unit.

30 March 2000 – Jiaozuo, China

A total of 74 people were killed in a cinema fire in central China, the People's Daily reported today. It said 63 males and 11 females died in yesterday's blaze which occurred at the Paradise Cinema in Jiaozuo, in the central province of Henan. Eleven others were rescued and one person was injured in the fire, which broke out in the early hours of yesterday morning and took 90 minutes to extinguish, the newspaper said. It gave no further details.

7 April 2000 – Dezhou, Shandong Province, China

A total of 13 people died in a hotel fire early yesterday in Shandong's Dezhou City, Xinhua reported. Eight of the dead were hotel guests and five were employees of the Meilihua Hotel. The five included a deputy manager of the hotel's nightclub, three security guards and a waitress. Two people suffered minor injuries. The fire broke out on the tenth floor of the three-star hotel about 01.00 yesterday. Firefighters took two hours to put out the blaze, which gutted the entire tenth floor. The rest of the hotel was not seriously damaged, Xinhua said. The agency quoted hotel manager Li Naizhu as saying the fire was caused by a careless smoker staying in a room on the tenth floor. It was rented to three hotel guests but four people were there.

14 April 2000 – Kinshasa Airport Democratic Republic of Congo

A series of explosions at Kinshasa airport today, triggered when an ammunition shipment caught fire, killed at least 50 people and injured 216, morgue and aid officials said today. The Democratic Republic of the Congo's government, which has not given a toll, said the blasts began with a warehouse fire, contradicting earlier reports of a military aircraft crash. Radio France Internationale put the number of dead at nearly 150 but gave no source for the figure. An official at a humanitarian agency said 216 people had been hurt. A source at the city's central morgue said there was a total of 50 bodies waiting to be identified. Government spokesman Didier Mumengi said in a statement a warehouse fire led to the blasts. State television blamed a short circuit for the blaze. "A fire in one of the warehouses located not far from the military airport spread until it reached an ammunition cargo in transit," Mumengi said. Several witnesses had said that an ammunition depot had exploded after a military aircraft crashed into a petrol tanker on take-off, setting off a fire. At least two other aircraft, a Nigerian-owned Boeing 707 and a Congolese army Caravelle, were reported to have been destroyed. Mumengi said the fire had not hurt the airport's capacity to function. "This fire has had no effect on the security or the safety of air navigation at the airport," he said. An aviation source, who saw the accident, confirmed the government's account of what caused the explosions but he suggested there was extensive damage to the airport. "The ammunition dump just went up. There were rockets flying around for several hours. The airport is still littered with ammunition," he said. He added that the windows had been blown out of most of the main buildings and the customs area had been destroyed. Both Sabena and Swissair have cancelled their flights to Kinshasa until further notice. The government had set up a commission to look into the circumstances of the incident, Mumengi said.

17 April 2000 – A press report, dated April 16, states: The death toll from a string of airport blasts rose to 101, the government said today, as most rescuers gave up the search for bodies in the wreckage of a hangar that collapsed in the explosions. Hospital authorities said 216 people were injured. About 80 of these remained in critical condition on Sunday, Fundu said. By the afternoon, all but a handful of Red Cross workers and other rescue volunteers were giving up the search through the collapsed hangar, used by customs and tax officials to handle incoming cargo from Europe. The rescue workers said they were hampered by lack of tools, water and food. The reasons for the blast remained unclear. Explanations ranged from a short circuit to a soldier dropping ammunition while unloading an aircraft full of weapons. The explosions of fuel and army munitions shattered windows, toppled buildings and flung deadly debris several miles away into residential neighbourhoods. President Laurent Kabila declared a national "time of bereavement", Fundu said without giving details. He also announced an aid package worth $750,000 and said victims' hospital and funeral expenses would be paid for by the state. All international flights over the weekend to and from Kinshasa were cancelled, airline officials said.

18 April 2000 – Congo's international airport has reopened to some limited civilian air traffic, four days after a string of explosions at munitions and fuel depots killed 109 people and injured over 200 others. A Sabena jet from Brussels landed yesterday, officials at Kinshasa's Ndjili international airport said. Other airlines, however, continued to stay away. Red Cross workers, meanwhile, continued to search for bodies in a hangar that collapsed in the explosions that lasted for about an hour Friday (April 14). Explanations for the blasts still ranged from a short circuit to a soldier dropping ammunition while unloading a military aircraft full of weapons.

At least 109 people were killed and 258 injured when a cargo of ammunition exploded at Kinshasa's Ndjili international airport on Friday (April 14), a senior government official said today. "There are 109 dead and 258 injured, 55 of them still in hospital. We are still going through the rubble looking for dead bodies," Theophile Mbemba, the governor of Kinshasa, told Reuters. Humanitarian officials broadly confirmed the Congolese government figures. A fire at the airport caused the explosion of ammunition which was in transit in the civilian part of the airport, completely destroying the customs area and blowing the windows out of the airport's main buildings. The government has set up an inquiry and said it had not ruled out any explanation, even a criminal act. A private aviation source said today that at least ten planes had been damaged in the explosion, in addition to two aircraft that were completely destroyed. According to the source, three planes belonging to Congo Airlines (CAL), the largest private airline in Democratic Republic of the Congo, were severely damaged in the explosion. An official with the UN military observer mission told Reuters that two of the mission's three planes were so badly damaged they would have to be replaced. International airlines suspended flights after the explosion but Belgium's Sabena has now resumed its normal schedule, with the first plane due to arrive in Kinshasa tomorrow morning.

22 April 2000 – Shanxi Province, China

A gas explosion buried 44 miners in a coal mine for two days, leaving 40 dead and three missing in central China, the official Legal Daily reported today. Rescuers found only one survivor, reaching him Monday (April 17), two days after the explosion in the Yongcai coal mine in central Shanxi province, 360 miles south-west of Beijing, the newspaper said. They recovered 40 bodies and as of yesterday were still searching for the three missing miners, the Legal Daily said. The newspaper said the explosion caused more casualties than any other accident in the coal mining industry this year.

23 April 2000 – Qingzhou, China

A press report, dated April 22, states: A fire today in a chicken processing factory in eastern China killed at least 38 workers and injured 20, the state-run Xinhua News Agency said. The fire broke out this morning, when around 240 workers were in the factory in Qingzhou, in coastal Shandong province, Xinhua said in a report late Saturday. The fire took nearly two hours to extinguish and its cause is now being investigated, Xinhua said. It gave no other details.