Chronicle Editor
BEIJING. – At least 67 people were killed when part of a power station under construction in China collapsed yesterday, state media reported. A cooling tower platform plunged to the ground in the early hours, trapping an unknown number of people beneath it, the official Xinhua news agency said.According to state broadcaster CCTV of the 70 people who were working at the site when the accident happened, 67 were killed and two injured. One remains missing.
Pictures of the scene in Fengcheng, in the central province of Jiangxi, showed a grey mass of concrete slabs, steel girders and twisted metal splayed in a heap on the ground inside a large round structure.
Hard-hatted rescue workers in neon jumpsuits carried bodies out from the site on stretchers wrapped in orange sheeting.
A total of 32 fire engines and 212 military personnel had been deployed to the scene, the Jiangxi provincial fire department said on a verified social media account.
The construction of two 1,000-megawatt coal-fired power units at the Ganneng Fengcheng power station began last July and was expected to be completed by early 2018, the local Yichun city government said on a verified social media account last year.
The expansion was budgeted to cost a total of 7.67 billion yuan (now $1.1 billion), it added.
Meanwhile, Chinese President Xi Jinping yesterday urged local authorities to step up efforts of rescue, treatment and follow-up work after a deadly construction site collapse that has killed 67. – AFP/Xinhua.
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