At least five killed and six missing after chemical plant explosion in China

AN EXPLOSION at a chemical plant in the Shandong province in eastern China yesterday has killed at least five people.

Chinese state news agency Xinhua reported late last night that six people were missing. Nineteen others were reported to have minor injuries.

The explosion happened at around noon local time at the Shandong Youdao Chemical Company in the city of Gaomi. The 47 hectare plant manufactured chemicals used in pesticides and pharmaceuticals. The cause of the incident is unknown, and air quality tests are yet to be carried out, according to the Reuters news agency.

This is the second explosion in two years at a chemical facility in Shandong, following the 2023 blast at a hydrogen peroxide plant in the province which killed nine people. 

Drone images from the site published by Xinhua show parts of the plant to be totally destroyed with some structures entirely razed to the ground. Drone footage published by state-run The Beijing News newspaper showed smoke rising from the chemical plant as well as from a second, unidentified building.

Videos on Chinese social media, verified by Reuters, showed windows of nearby buildings being ripped from their hinges during the explosion, and that black and orange smoke was rising from the plant.

Provincial and local authorities have set up a joint rescue command centre to respond to the incident which is running a rescue operation to find the missing people. The Chinese Ministry of Emergency Management has sent 200 rescue workers to the site, according to Reuters.

This is the latest of dozens of explosions at chemical facilities in China over the last decade. Two blasts in 2015 at chemical storage facilities in the port city of Tianjin killed more than 170 people and prompted state authorities to tighten laws governing chemical storage. Despite this, a paper published last year found that 72 “major chemical accidents” between 2017 and 2022 had killed more than 400 people. The paper’s authors blamed the high number of incidents on the “rapid expansion” of China’s chemical manufacturing sector.