The accident occurred Thursday is one of the most serious in the history of the country. A survivor was found in the rubble forty hours after the explosion.
The balance sheet of Thursday's explosion of a chemical plant in China rose to 64 dead, and rescuers found a survivor forty hours after this industrial accident, which is among the worst in the country's history. Saturday was indicated by official source.
28 missing. A previous report stated 47 dead and 90 seriously injured. Twenty-eight people are still missing, CCTV national television reported, citing Cao Lubao, the mayor of Yancheng, a town 260 kilometers north of Shanghai. "The identities of those killed and missing are being established through interviews with family members, visits to their DNA test homes," the source said. The survivor emerged from the rubble by firefighters Saturday at dawn is a man in his forties, said the municipality on the social network Weibo. He was hospitalized, the statement said without providing further details on his state of health. Yancheng Municipality assured Weibo that more than 600 people had been cared for.
The strand of the explosion not known. The explosion Thursday devastated homes for miles around. Its origin remains unknown for the moment. It caused a huge fireball several tens of meters high and a thick column of gray smoke, according to images relayed on social networks. The central government said it had set up a commission of inquiry to shed light on the source of the disaster. Several arrests have been made, according to local authorities, who did not provide any figures.
A factory pinned for its failures. Founded in 2007, the company Tianjiayi Chemical, where the explosion occurred, had 195 employees. It produces chemicals including anisole, a highly flammable compound with a smell close to anise. It has in the past been pinned repeatedly for failures to regulate the environment, according to the local administration in charge of these issues. In 2015 and 2017, the company was fined for violating solid waste and wastewater legislation.
Drone images have shown an apocalyptic landscape, with as far as the eye can see charred or totally destroyed buildings. This is the deadliest explosion in China since a chemical site in Tianjin (north) in 2015, which killed at least 165 people.