Series Of Fatal Gas Blasts Rips Apart A Taiwanese City, Killing 24 And Injuring Over 270
At least 24 people were killed and 271 injured when several underground gas explosions ripped through Taiwan’s second-largest city, hurling concrete and cars through the air and blasting trenches in the streets, authorities said Friday, as a search for the cause began.
By Sadho Ram — 01 Aug 2014, 01:32 PM — Updated about 10 years ago
A series of explosions ripped through the city of Kaohsiung in southern Taiwan on Thursday night, killing 24 people and wounding more than 270, the NYT reports
Suspected gas explosions on Thursday night killed at least 24 people in Kaohsiung, Taiwan.
Image via nyt.comA series of gas explosions in the southern Taiwanese city of Kaohsiung has killed 24 people and injured about 270 others, officials say. The blasts rocked the city's Cianjhen district, scattering cars and blowing deep trenches in roads.
The dead included at least four firefighters. Kaohsiung's mayor called the blasts a "suspected petrochemical material explosion," but local officials said it was too early to pinpoint a specific cause.
At a news conference early Friday, officials said that a leak of ethylene, propene or butane may have caused the explosions after flowing into sewage lines, the government’s Central News Agency reported.
nytimes.com
The news agency said that the disaster was “not connected to terrorism.” The explosions began around midnight Thursday, affecting more than a square mile of the city’s downtown. Residents reported a large-scale gas leak about 9 p.m. in the city’s Cianjhen District, Taiwan’s National Fire Agency said.
washingtonpost.comImages of the scene showed major fires, upturned vehicles, bodies covered in debris and streets split in two
The blasts happened around midnight on Thursday in a densely populated part of the city, shattering roads and throwing vehicles into the air.
Image via bbcimg.co.uk
According to witnesses there were huge fireballs soaring into the air
"I saw lots of cars and motorcycles with engines all over on the road, and doctors checking if bodies were dead or alive," eyewitness Chen Guan-yuan, who was at the scene shortly after the blast, told the BBC.
"Because the explosion range is so far so it's really difficult to handle this situation immediately," Mr Chen said, adding that the blasts "caused a long-range hole, like a huge cave".
bloomberg.com
One witness told AFP news agency he saw "fire soaring up to possibly 20 storeys high after a blast". Another told Taiwan's Central News Agency that the "explosions were like thunder and the road in front of my shop ripped open". "It felt like an earthquake," the witness said.
nytimes.com
People in the area were evacuated to schools. By Friday morning most fires were reported to have been extinguished.
Firefighters were still trying to see if people were trapped under the rubble, the BBC's Cindy Sui in Taipei reported. The exact cause of the blasts had not yet been identified but several petrochemical companies had pipelines running along the sewage system in the district, our correspondent added.
People had been ordered to stay home from school and work in Kaohsiung's Cianjhen and Lingya districts on Friday, local media reported. Kaohsiung mayor Chen Chu wrote on her Facebook page (in Chinese): "Rescue efforts are still underway."
washingtonpost.comShe urged everyone to "follow the instructions of rescue teams at the scene, and avoid standing around and watching". "The local government has already requested [gas suppliers] CPC and Hsin Kao Gas cut off the gas supply," she added, urging residents to stay calm.
Buildings hundreds of yards from each other were engulfed in flames, with bright orange fireballs leaping up from grates in city streets
Video from a car dashboard that a resident posted online showed an explosion fill the ground floor of a building. The driver turned to avoid the fire, only to encounter flames gushing from the middle of the street a block away.
nytimes.com
Security camera footage showed the blast roaring down city streets, followed by billowing clouds of smoke and flying debris. Some roads completely collapsed, leaving emergency vehicles crushed and passengers pinned under piles of concrete.
washingtonpost.comMore than 1,000 people were displaced from their homes and spent the night in eight emergency shelters
Vehicles are left lie in a destroyed street following multiple explosions from an underground gas leak in Kaohsiung, Taiwan, early Friday, Aug. 1, 2014
Image via washingtonpost.comTaiwan’s Ministry of Justice said it was dispatching up to 100 investigators to look into the cause. Kaohsiung, with about 2.8 million residents, is Taiwan’s second-largest city. It is near a major port on the island’s southwest corner.
nytimes.com