China construction collapse toll rises to 67

A work platform at a power plant cooling tower being built in the city of Fengcheng came tumbling down.

Rescue workers look for survivors after a work platform collapsed at the Fengcheng power plant in eastern China's Jiangxi Province. Wan Xiang / Xinhua via AP

Beijing // At least 67 people were killed when part of a power station under construction in China collapsed on Thursday, the latest industrial accident in a country with a dismal safety record.

A cooling tower platform plunged to the ground in the early hours, trapping an unknown number of people beneath it, the official Xinhua news agency said.

State broadcaster CCTV put the toll at 67, with local reports saying one person was still missing and two others injured.

Earlier reports had put the number of dead at 40.

Pictures of the scene in Fengcheng, in the central province of Jiangxi, showed a grey mass of concrete slabs, steel girders and twisted metal splayed in a heap on the ground inside a large round structure.

Rescue workers bodies out from the site on stretchers wrapped in orange sheeting. A total of 32 fire engines and 212 military personnel were deployed to the scene, the Jiangxi provincial fire department said.

The construction of two 1,000-megawatt coal-fired power units at the Ganneng Fengcheng power station began last July and was expected to be completed by early 2018, the local Yichun city government said.

The expansion was budgeted to cost a total of 7.67 billion yuan (now Dh4bn), it added.

Industrial accidents are common in China, where safety standards are often laxly enforced.

In August a pipeline explosion at a coal-fired power plant in the neighbouring province of Hubei killed 21.

Earlier this summer more than 130 people were taken to hospital after chemicals leaked from a plant in eastern China.

In April a chemical fire burned for 16 hours in the coastal province of Jiangsu after an explosion at a facility storing chemicals and fuel, requiring 400 firefighters to quell the flames.

Last December, the collapse of a gypsum mine in the eastern province of Shandong left one person dead and 13 others unaccounted for, with four miners rescued after 36 days underground.

And in August last year, at least 170 people were killed in an explosion at a chemicals storage facility in the northern port city of Tianjin.

* Agence France-Presse