40 plant laborers are dead after a cooling tower crushed them alive

World News Nilgun Salim
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So far, the balance sheet shows 40 deaths, local media reports, quoted by Daily Mail.  The collapse of the energy block occurred in the Chinese city of Fengcheng, while the victims were in the process of building a new power plant.

The platform of a cooling tower collapsed on a large group of laborers, blocking them underneath for several hours.

Shortly after the other workers from the plant called the emergency services, numerous intervention team, 32 firemen and 212 members of the military personnel arrived at the scene.

Despite the fact they arrived in short notice, the massive weight of the cooling tower crushed the 40 workers alive.

According to the Chinese authorities, their number might increase, because their colleagues are not sure how many became trapped under rubble. Five severely injured workers were rushed at the hospital.

Apparently, when the cooling tower began to shake, a total number of 68 laborers were on the construction site.

‘It is likely to rise as an unknown number of people are still trapped’, reported Xinhua.

The construction project of the two 1,000-megawatt coal-fired power units began in July 2015. According to locals, the completion of the project is supposed to occur in 2018.

These kind of accidents are extremely common in China, where safety standards are often laxly enforced.

According to Al Jazeera, in August a pipeline explosion at a coal-fired power plant in the neighboring province of Hubei killed 21. Also in summer, 130 people were severely injured after chemicals leaked from a factory.