TBEIJING: A massive cooking gas explosion at a barbecue restaurant in northwestern China killed 31 people and injured seven, Chinese authorities said Thursday.
The blast tore through the establishment at around 8:40 p.m. Wednesday on a busy street in Yinchuan, the capital of the traditionally Muslim Ningxia Hui Autonomous Region, as people were gathering on the eve of the Dragon Boat Festival holiday, the official Xinhua News Agency said.
The festival is a national holiday devoted to eating rice dumplings and racing boats manned by teams of paddlers.
Online news site The Paper cited a woman identified only by her surname Chen saying she had been about 50 meters (164 feet) from the restaurant when she heard the explosion. She described seeing two waiters emerge from the restaurant afterward, one of whom collapsed immediately, while thick smoke billowed from the restaurant and a strong smell of cooking gas permeated the area.
Footage on state broadcaster CCTV showed more than a dozen firefighters working at the site as smoke poured out of a gaping hole in the restaurant’s facade.
Shards of glass and other debris littered the darkened street, which is also home to a number of other eateries and entertainment venues.
“A leak of liquefied petroleum gas... caused an explosion during the operation of a barbecue restaurant,” state news agency Xinhua said of the Wednesday evening blast, citing the regional Communist Party committee.
Seven more people were receiving medical treatment, the agency said, with one of them in a “critical condition.”
Two others suffered severe burns, two had minor injuries and two had scratches caused by flying glass, Xinhua said.
The explosion at about 8:40 p.m. (1240 GMT) Wednesday took place at the Fuyang Barbecue Restaurant in a residential area of downtown Yinchuan, the capital of the Ningxia autonomous region.
Chinese President Xi Jinping “demanded all-out efforts in treating the wounded and the strengthening of safety supervision and management in key industries and fields to effectively protect people’s lives and property,” CCTV reported Thursday.
The Ministry of Emergency Management said local fire and rescue services had dispatched more than 100 people and 20 vehicles to the scene in the wake of the blast.
Local authorities “immediately... demanded that all-out search and rescue efforts be organized, the wounded be properly treated and casualties be reduced as much as possible,” the ministry said.
The rescue efforts had concluded by 4:00 am Thursday, it said.
One video posted on social media showed two shirtless men, their trousers tattered and upper bodies covered in dust, crouching and standing dazed on a busy street sprayed with broken glass.
Another clip showed fire engines and ambulances tearing through the streets nearby, flashing blue and red lights and sounding their sirens.
Social media images showed dozens of people gathering behind an emergency cordon on the opposite side of the street, with some visibly distressed.
AFP was able to geolocate the clips by matching the buildings to state media footage of the explosion’s aftermath.
Explosions and other deadly incidents are relatively common in China, where building codes are often poorly enforced and widespread unauthorized construction can make it hard for people to flee burning structures.
At least 17 people died in a fire at a restaurant in the northeastern city of Changchun in September last year, according to statements given at the time by local authorities.
In January 2022, an explosion triggered by a suspected gas leak brought down a building in the city of Chongqing, killing more than a dozen people.
In February, 53 miners were killed in the collapse of a massive open pit coal mine in the northern region of Inner Mongolia, leading to numerous arrests, and four people were detained over a fire at an industrial trading company in central China in November that killed 38 people.
At least nine people were killed in an explosion at a Chinese petrochemical plant, and three others died in a helicopter crash during the country’s May Day holiday.
The central government has pledged stronger safety measures since an explosion in 2015 at a chemical warehouse in the northern port city of Tianjin killed 173 people, most of them firefighters and police officers. In that case, a number of local officials were accused of having taken bribes to ignore safety violations.
