BEIJING (AP) — A fire at a shoe factory in eastern China on Tuesday killed at least 16 people, state
media reported.
The
blaze broke out at the Dadong factory in the city of Wenling in
Zhejiang province, state broadcaster CCTV said. Firefighters put it out
about three hours later and rescued more than 20 people, it said.
The
report didn’t say how the fire started. Such factories often contain
large amounts of adhesives and other flammable chemicals.
An
official with the fire service in the surrounding city of Taizhou, who
gave only his surname, Luo, confirmed the fire, but said he had no
further details.
China suffers frequent industrial accidents and
121 people were killed in a poultry plant fire in the country’s
northeast last June. That fire was triggered by a short circuit, but
investigators found the plant’s safety exits were blocked, trapping
workers inside.
On Saturday, a blaze raged for 10 hours in the
heart of an ancient tourist town in the western province of Yunnan,
destroying 242 structures and leaving about 2,600 people homeless. The
severity of the fire was blamed in part on unresponsive firefighting
systems and the inability of tanker trucks to enter the town’s narrow
streets.
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