Global Courant
At least 31 people have been killed in a gas explosion at a barbecue restaurant in northwestern China. Officials said Thursdayhours after the blast turned the restaurant into a charred ruin.
The explosion hit the two-story restaurant in Yinchuan, the capital of Ningxia region, at 8:40 pm on Wednesday, when it was busy with customers eating lamb kebabs and other dishes on gas burners. Firefighters rushed to the scene, where thick smoke rose into the air and broken glass and debris covered the street. They extinguished the fire within an hour.
The extent of the death did not become clear to the public until the following morning, when authorities announced the death toll and that seven other people were hospitalized with injuries, one of them in critical condition.
The Chinese Communist Party authorities have become increasingly effective at withholding details of accidents and disasters until they have full control of the situation. a brief first report from Xinhua, the official news agency, had said one person was killed and 20 injured. It made no mention of the possibility of more deaths.
On Thursday, officials in Ningxia promised conducted a thorough investigation into the blast and announced a campaign to improve safety. China’s Supreme Leader Xi Jinping issued a statement condolences, as he usually does after major accidents. Mr Xi noted that the explosion happened the night before the Dragon Boat Festival, or Duanwujie, a traditional Chinese holiday. “Pay attention to hidden, emerging risks and conduct comprehensive security checks,” he said.
The deadly explosion is likely to spark further scrutiny of China’s booming barbecue restaurant industry. In general, China’s safety record in mines and job sites has improved, according to official statistics, and local governments often have restaurants and their gas supplies checked. But serious accidents continue to happen.
At the end of 2021, an explosion occurred at a barbecue restaurant in Shenyang, northeast China, killed five people. Earlier this month, a Chinese news website about the hospitality industry appeared counted in the last 11 gas explosions in restaurants since June 2022, some of them deadly.
A full official account of the cause of the latest accident is likely to take weeks or months. But Xinhua, citing police and fire records, said restaurant workers remembered discovering a gas leak about an hour before the explosion and traced it to a broken valve. The explosion occurred while the valve was being replaced. Two phone numbers registered under the name of the restaurant were disabled.
