China chemical plant explosion: relatives grieve and villagers flee like refugees
- Hospital emergency wards filled with injured workers, residents and anxious families
- Survivors and witnesses tell of the destruction caused by Thursday’s blast at chemical plant in Jiangsu
Injured residents scrambled for medical help after a blast at a chemical plant in eastern China’s Jiangsu province erupted with the force of a minor earthquake, killing at least 47 people.
In the hours before dawn on Friday, injured people streamed into the emergency ward at Xiangshui People’s Hospital, one of the biggest hospitals in Xiangshui county, about 300km (186 miles) north of Shanghai.
Dozens of relatives waited anxiously outside the hospital’s casualty area, which was guarded by the police.
Eight-year-old Xu Mengyao was discharged after being given 30 stitches in her forehead. The explosion had shattered the windows of her classroom at a school 20 minutes’ walk from the plant.
After the blast at the Jiangsu Tianjiayi Chemical plant in the township of Chenjiagang, all clinics were full. Xu’s parents took her to three clinics before they found one that could treat her injuries. They then took her to the Xiangshui hospital’s emergency ward to treat a cough.
They clung together on a single bed and prepared to stay overnight, with Xu watching online videos of the explosion on a mobile phone.
“Our home is in a mess,” Xu’s father said. “There is a giant hole in our kitchen. Broken glass is everywhere. This will cost me at least 100,000 yuan [US$15,000].”
Nearby in the hospital, a worker who was pulled from the rubble of the factory was being flipped repeatedly onto his front and back to try to revive feeling in his legs.
At about 2am, a man coated in dust from the blast was pronounced dead soon after he was rushed into the emergency ward. A relative screamed at a police officer who had helped carry the man into the ward: “Why couldn’t you save him earlier?”
The deceased man’s wife sobbed over the body for more than an hour before staff had to clear the space for another patient.
Xu Meihua, 49, had arrived at the hospital soon after 7pm with a cough that worsened into breathing difficulties. She lives near the pesticide plant and was settling down for a nap when the facility exploded.
China chemical plant explosion death toll reaches 47, with 90 injured
Unable to consume anything but milk, she was diagnosed as being poisoned by smoke from the blast and put on an intravenous drip.
“When we got out of our house and set off to the hospital, people were fleeing our village like refugees and desperately asking for rides on the streets,” said Xu, whose shop was destroyed by the blast. “We had explosions in the past, but never as deadly as this one.”
After three IV bags and a CAT scan, she and her husband headed off to sleep in a student dormitory at a training centre, where a friend had allowed them to stay temporarily.
