It was a somber morning for China, after explosions and fire tore through parts of a poultry processing plant in northeast China, killing 119 people. The fire started a little after 6 a.m. local time in the Mishazi Township of the province of Jilin. Authorities say the explosion was caused by leakage in tanks of ammonia, which is used in the poultry industry as a coolant. Another 54 people were injured in the explosion and fire.
More than 300 workers were inside the plant that belonged to the Jilin Baoyuanfeng Poultry Company, at the moment the fire began. According to reports, witnesses said they heard a sudden bang, and later saw dark smoke. Survivors said that inside the plant the heard the same bang, and then the lights went out.
"Inside and outside the workshop was glowing red, and the lighting and escape indicators were all out," one worker, Wang Xiaoyun, told the China News Service.
Panic grew as workers were unable to escape because most of the exits were locked or blocked, forcing them to stampede toward a narrow side door.
"I knew the fire door was blocked, so I went back toward another part of the factory. Everybody was flooding in the same direction in a stampede. I was lucky to crawl out alive,'' said Guo Yan, a 39-year-old woman who was interviewed by Chinese state media in a hospital in Changchun. "People were all rushing, pressing and crushing each other," she said. "I fell over and had to crawl forward using all my might."
"The blaze ran through the whole workshop within three minutes, and fewer than 30 persons escaped," recalled an unidentified worker. Authorities sent 61 ambulances and more than 270 medical staff to help the injured, said official information about the tragedy posted on the microblog of the provincial government.
According to emergency personnel interviewed by Xinhua, the official news agency, the plant's "complicated" interior and narrow exits, in addition to the locked doors, made it difficult to rescue those trapped inside. "When I finally ran out and looked back at the plant, I saw high flames," worker Wang Fengya, 44, told the news agency.
China's prime minister, Li Keqiang, and president, Xi Jinping, who is traveling abroad, promptly issued orders about the disaster. Mr. Xi told officials to "get to the bottom of the causes of this accident, pursue culpability according to the law, sum up the profound lessons and adopt effective measures to resolutely prevent major accidents from occurring," Xinhua reported.
Around noon, the fire had been mostly extinguished and bodies were being recovered from the scene. Later in the day, Xinhua said "people responsible" in the company that operates the plant had been arrested, but did not identify them.
Ammonia, what reportedly caused the fire, is widely used as a refrigerant in meat packing, poultry and other food-processing industries, and it is known to cause frequent incidents when it leaks, but never on this scale.
"I've never heard of any accident of this scale," said Huang Ming, an industry expert at Nanjing Agriculture University. "If you are using old equipment, there is a possibility of leakage but not a disaster like this.''
"When I woke up, there was smoke rising in the air and sirens, and you knew straight away that it was bad news," Dong Wenjun, a metal trader in Mishazi, said in a telephone interview. "But I didn't expect it to be this bad. They were all local people, I think."
Jilin Baoyuanfeng Poultry, a company founded in 2009, has 1,200 employees and an annual output amounting to 67,000 tons of chicken products. They serve markets in 20 cities nationwide and have won numerous awards for their contribution to the local economy.
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