At least 67 people were killed in China after a platform in an unfinished power plant cooling tower collapsed, the latest industrial accident in a country plagued by chronic workplace tragedies.
One worker remains trapped hours after the platform collapsed at 7am local time in the eastern province of Jiangxi, the official Xinhua news agency reported. Two more people were injured.
There were 68 workers on the scaffolding at the time of the accident, local media reported.
Photos and video of the site showed orange and black-clad rescue workers sifting through iron pipes and debris covering the floor of the cooling tower. A head of mangled metal lay at the centre of the tower, as more than 200 rescue personnel were on site, according to the local fire department.
The cooling tower is part of a $1.1bn coal-fired power plant that was set to be completed in 2018.
China’s leaders have vowed to improve work safety, but industrial accidents remain common with the country’s mining sector notorious for its high fatality rate. In the late 1990s mining deaths numbered as high as 20 a day, before falling to about 1,000 a year more recently.
In one of the worst disasters in recent years, more than 170 people were killed last year in the port city of Tianjin when improperly-stored chemicals exploded at a logistics warehouse.
A pipeline explosion at a coal-fired power plant killed 21 in August.
