{"id":12355,"date":"2018-11-27T22:05:03","date_gmt":"2018-11-28T06:05:03","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/?p=12355"},"modified":"2018-11-27T22:06:49","modified_gmt":"2018-11-28T06:06:49","slug":"explosion-at-china-chemical-factory-in-city-of-zhangjiakou-kills-22","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/?p=12355","title":{"rendered":"Explosion at China chemical factory in city of Zhangjiakou kills 22"},"content":{"rendered":"

An explosion near a chemical plant in China’s northern Hebei province early on Wednesday killed 22 people and injured at least 22 others.<\/p>\n

A video of the blast scene in Zhangjiakou city shared by state media showed billowing black smoke and flames, while photographs showed rows of burned-out cars and trucks lining the streets.<\/p>\n

\"Image<\/p>\n

The fire engulfed 50 vehicles, the official Xinhua news agency reported, citing\u00a0government\u00a0sources.<\/p>\n

State media said all fires at the blast site had been extinguished.<\/p>\n

An official news release said the blast occurred just after midnight at a loading dock next to the plant\u00a0operated by the Hebei Shenghua Chemical Industry Co. Ltd.<\/p>\n

Zhangjiakou, a city about 156km northwest of Beijing, is set to host the 2022 Winter Olympics alongside the capital Beijing.<\/p>\n

The explosion occurred at the entrance of the factory when a vehicle transporting dangerous chemicals blew up, according to The Paper, a news outlet that cited a staffer at the Zhangjiakou City Safety Production Supervision Administration.<\/p>\n

\"Image<\/p>\n

“On-site search and rescue work and investigation of the cause of the accident are still under way,” the propaganda department said.<\/p>\n

Three decades of swift economic growth in China have been marred by incidents ranging from deadly mining disasters to factory fires, but public anger over safety standards has grown.<\/p>\n

China has vowed to improve industrial standards but environmentalists say they fear oversight weaknesses persist, including an opaque production process for hazardous chemicals.<\/p>\n

In August 2015, 165 people were killed after a chemical warehouse explosion in the port city of Tianjin. A government report found the disaster was caused by hazardous materials that had been improperly or illegally stored.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

An explosion near a chemical plant...<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-12355","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-china"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12355","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=12355"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12355\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12358,"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12355\/revisions\/12358"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=12355"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=12355"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=12355"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}