Explosives blast highway, 4 dead
0 Comments
The trio violated the laws regarding the transportation of explosives, local media reported.
The two drivers suffered leg injuries in the blast that sent shards of metal shooting through the air, although they had run nearly 200 m away from the truck. The cargo owner was not injured.
Just before the explosion, Liu, one of the drivers, spotted the fire at the right rear of the truck in the rear-view mirror, Zhang told the police after being detained.
Liu woke Zhang and Wu, stopped the truck and reportedly started to run, without trying to put out the fire or warn others on the expressway of the impending disaster.
The four deaths came from a truck loaded with chili peppers that was passing by in the opposite direction. The blast toppled the pepper truck and another carrying steel into the roadside ditch.
The two trucks were destroyed.
The accident paralyzed the highway that connects Beijing and Zhuhai of Guangdong province for at least four hours, as the road surface was broken up into pieces.
"More than 700 sq m of road surface was blown up," said Zhang Liang, an official with the Hubei Administration Office of the Beijing-Zhuhai Highway.
The local government will pay the villagers affected by the explosion 100,000 yuan ($14,700) for their medical treatment and relocation, Xinhua News Agency reported.
In the village of Yuegang, the roof of a pig farm collapsed because of the blast and two pigs were killed.
The blast was so powerful that residents in Wuhan, Hubei's provincial capital about 40 km away from the epicenter, reported that they had felt a quake-like tremor.
About 100 local villagers profited from the blast by collecting peppers strewn across the ground near the scene of the accident.
Comments