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 The blast in the wealthy eastern province of Jiangsu occurred
around 7:30 a.m. in Kunshan city, about an hour's drive from
Shanghai, after an explosion ripped through a workshop that polishes
wheel hubs.
An preliminary investigation suggested that the blast at Kunshan
Zhongrong Metal Products Co Ltd. was triggered when a flame was lit
in a dust-filled room, the local government said at a press
conference, describing the incident as a serious safety breach.
Several officials from the firm have been since been detained, the
government said. State news agency Xinhua said five company
representatives were held by authorities.
Survivors with charred skin were seen being wheeled into ambulances,
as residents recalled hearing the explosion from two kilometers
away. At the site of the blast, television images showed wrecked
walls and heavy machinery that was hurled through windows.
"We heard a really loud blast at about 7 a.m. this morning so we
rushed out of our dormitories," said Zhou Xu, a 26-year-old working
at a plant across the site.
 "First the ambulance came, then as the news surfaced in the media,
many families - especially the wives - rushed to the site to see if
their husbands were okay."
A security guard from an adjacent factory, who declined to be named,
said the impact from the explosion was so great that it shattered
the windows of his guard house, located about 500 meters away from
the site of the blast.
Images online and on state television showed large plumes of black
smoke billowing from a white low-rise building. Many of the injured,
who appeared badly burnt in scorched clothing, were shown lying on
wooden pallets, waiting to be stretchered on to trucks, public buses
and ambulances.
Four emergency blood-donation centers were set up in the city to
assist casualties, some of whom will be taken to Shanghai and other
nearby cities for treatment later on Saturday, state television
said.
Urged by President Xi Jinping to spare no efforts in the rescue
works, Kunshan's government said it was bringing in doctors from
Shanghai and other regions.
"In my 20 years of work, I've never seen so many patients with burns
on over 80 percent of their bodies," a senior unnamed doctor was
quoted as saying on the Weibo microblog account of China's CCTV.
The doctor warned that the eventual death toll could be "very high".
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POOR SAFETY RECORD
China, the world's second-largest economy, has a poor record on
workplace safety. Workers are often poorly trained or ill-equipped
to protect themselves from industrial accidents.
By early afternoon in Kunshan, the police had cordoned off the
ageing factory and blocked media access to the local hospital.
Authorities had also cleaned up the factory's exterior, and a crowd
of bystanders and row of fire-trucks parked in the compound were the
only outward signs of the calamity that had occurred hours
earlier.Kunshan Zhongrong could not be reached for a comment. Its
website said the firm is wholly owned by an unidentified foreign
investor, employs 450 workers and counts General Motors and other
U.S. companies as clients.
The Kunshan government said 264 workers were at the site when the
explosion struck, and 44 died immediately. Xinhua cited officials
say saying that the number of injured totaled 187.
"Of course, the foreign owner of the company will shoulder the
responsibility," said Duan Shenyi, a user of China's microblog Weibo
said on Saturday. "But because we lack a workers' union, we do not
have enough supervision of companies." A fire at a poultry
slaughterhouse in the northeast province of Jilin in June 2013
killed 120 people. The blaze was blamed on poor management, lack of
government oversight and locked or blocked exits.
(Additional reporting by Aly Sung in KUNSHAN and Judy Hua in
BEIJING; Writing by Koh Gui Qing; Editing by Matt Driskill and Simon
Cameron-Moore)
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