Here are the most disastrous construction accidents in China!
9 - Tianjin explosions Back in 2015, huuuuuge explosions rocked the
city of Tianjin China.
Around 300 homes collapsed or were directly affected by the explosions.
More than eight thousand new cars from Hyundai, Kia, Volkswagen, Renault, and Toyota, parked
in lots located near the blast site, were burned.
Multiple buildings surrounding the blast site were later declared "structurally unsafe".
In total, 304 buildings and 12,428 cars were damaged.
Beyond insurance, the cost to businesses of the break in the supply chain caused by the
explosions was estimated at $9 BILLION dollars, making it the third most expensive supply
chain disruption of 2015.
Sooooo what exactly happened to create these huge explosions?!
Hazardous chemicals improperly stored at a container storage station were identified
as the source of the fire.
The fire first started in a container through auto-ignition of nitrocellulose, because of
vaporization of the wetting agent during hot weather.
The fire quickly spread, igniting other chemicals, including ammonium nitrate, causing the first
major explosion that quickly escalated to even bigger explosions.
With the first rain after the initial explosions white chemical foam covered the streets.
Citizens complained of burning sensations and rashes on skin after coming into contact
with rain droplets.
Chinese authorities found that several security regulations were ignored, creating an unsafe
environment that led to the explosions.
Various courts in China handed jail sentences to 49 government officials and warehouse executives
and staffs for their roles in circumventing the safety rules that led to the disaster.
The chairman of the company was essentially sentenced to life in prison with no parole.
8 - Don’t mind the building Just when you thought construction couldn't
get weirder or more poorly planned in China, here's another example to prove you wrong.
This crazy blunder in China has to do with the construction of an apartment complex in
the middle of a busy highway.
How does that happen?
Are developers just able to do whatever they want?!
Actually no, here’s what happened.
It seems there was a bit of mixup in the planning.
Actually a huge mixup.
Residents were uprooted from their homes because the city was about to build a park in their
location.
As retribution, they were offered a brand new apartment complex for them to live in.
Sounds like a good deal right?
So the residents moved, and the apartment complex was built.
Except there was a huge problem.
Little did the residents know, the site of their new apartment complex was in fact the
same location where an 8-lane highway was going to be constructed.
City planners simply forgot about that little eight-lane superhighway they were going to
build.
When the residents heard this, they went nuts– they weren’t going to be pushed away from
their homes a second time.
Local authorities conceded to their claims and decided to “incorporate” the apartment
complex into the highway's infrastructure.
Is it just me, or is it a bit crazy that an apartment complex is directly overlooking
one of the busiest roads in the country?
7 - Mudslide Unstable construction debris has been the
cause of various building accidents in China.
One of the most notorious ones, which practically erased a whole building complex of 33 units,
was a landslide that occurred on the southern city of Shenzhen.
A mountain of dirt, something experts believe was caused by wrongly placed chunks of cement
and other ground debris, collapsed and essentially covered everything in its way.
It managed to cover an extension of three hundred and eighty THOUSAND square meters,
with up to 30 feet of mud!
Shenzhen has become an industrial center for China over the past 30 years, a place that
has seen many inexperienced migrant workers seek jobs in the construction industry.
However with rapid industrialization comes relaxed safety standards.
Authorities pointed to an explosion of a natural gas pipeline that cracked the foundation of
the mountain of dirt.
The mountain was located on a steep angle and because of how large it was, it rapidly
fell, spreading dirt all over the place and sinking everything –buildings and people–
under a pile of dirt and cement.
6 - Poultry factory Can you imagine working on the job one day,
and all of a sudden your workplace catches on fire?
This is pretty much what happened to workers at the Dehui Poultry plant back in 2013.
The plant burst into flames after a series of explosions.
Hundreds of workers were trapped inside the building.
So how exactly were they trapped inside?
As crazy as this sounds, most of the fire exits were locked.
And any exits that WERE open couldn't fit the amount of people that were trying to escape.
For some reason, exits were kept locked during working hours.
The panic that the people inside went through was described as terrible, especially considering
the fact that as soon as the fire started, the lights went out.
Firefighters had a difficult time trying to access the building, so they were able to
rescue only around 100 workers.
The fire department suggests there may have been an ammonia leak which either caused the
fire or made fighting the blaze more hazardous, while other reports said the fire started
because of an electrical fault.
5 - Yangtze River disaster One of the most tragic ship accidents in China
happened on June 1st 2015, when a chinese cruise ship capsized after it was hit by a
tornado in the middle of a heavy storm on the Yangtze River in central China.
The storm took the ship by surprise, quickly turning it over and dumping its 456 passengers.
Only 14 people survived, making the accident the worst catastrophe in more than 70 years.
Most of the passengers on board the ship were elderly tourists, some tour guides, and the
rest were crew members.
In December of 2015, Chinese authorities started an official investigation which led to some
conclusive evidence about the ship's management, as well as the team that was in charge.
They discovered that back in 2013, the ship was called out for safety violations– the
shipping company and management team had failed to recognize some flaws in the ship's functionality.
Efforts from Chinese police included a task force of 3,000 officials and inflatable boats.
Unfortunately, they were only able to rescue 14 individuals, including the ship's captain
and engineer.
4 - Just Fell Over When you imagine a newly constructed building,
you probably never imagine it falling over on its side.
Wellllll let me tell you about this one.
Back in 2009 a Shanghai construction developer came under investigation by Chinese authorities
for not maintaining proper standards when it came to building a popular residential
complex.
One of the 11 buildings on the site fell to the ground just as it had been finished, with
one very unfortunate construction worker caught on the wrong side of the building.
To be honest, only one person is a minor miracle.
Amazingly, the rest of the site remained untouched.
Initial investigations attribute the accident to the excavations for the construction of
a garage under the collapsed building.
Large quantities of earth were removed and dumped in a landfill next to a nearby creek.
The weight of the earth caused the river bank to collapse, which, in turn, allowed water
to seep into the ground, creating a muddy foundation for the building.
Wellps.
Many experts point to the faulty construction regulations that had become so common in China
for the time period.
Buildings are put up in a hurry by largely unskilled migrant workers, and developers
may have been tempted to take shortcuts.
The pilings used in the development are outlawed in Hong Kong because they aren’t strong
enough to support the kind of ultra-high buildings that are common in Hong Kong.
But in mainland China, they’re often used because buildings there are typically much
shorter.
3 - Two basketballs Every once in awhile, holes just appear in
the middle of a road.
This is essentially what happened earlier this year in Foshan, near Hong Kong.
During excavation procedures for a new subway, the road above ground collapsed, sinking at
least 20 feet into the ground.
The collapse occurred in a central area of the city beneath an eight-lane road.
The area was essentially the size of two basketball courts.
Prior to the collapse, water had been leaking to the site.
Construction workers tried to plug the leaks, but it ultimately damaged the foundation,
causing the road to cave-in.
It’s one of the biggest disasters of this type to recently happen in China.
The rapid expansion of subway networks in Chinese cities has frequently led to cave-ins
and other deadly accidents.
Although China has made considerable progress in improving industrial safety, many lives
are still lost annually in factories, coal mines and transportation networks.
2 - Trapped Back in 2015, a mine collapsed 720 feet underground
in the city of Laiwu, China.
A rescue team lead by local authorities discovered that 8 workers were still alive through sounds
they heard via an intercom.
Infrared cameras caught the survivors trapped in complete darkness waving their hands.
Rescuers finally were able to dig a relief hole to provide food for the trapped miners,
who hadn't eaten in five days.
According to experts, rescuing the miners proved to be extremely difficult.
The collapse caused an earthquake that registered 4.0 on the Richter scale that was felt throughout
the entire city.
Underground was limestone, shale, sandstone, karst caves, and seeping water.
The terrain was changing constantly, which made rescue operations more difficult.
Rescue workers ended up using a man-size capsule in their final step to extract the trapped
miners.
They were trapped for 36 days before finally being rescued!
As you can imagine, the trapped men didn’t think they had any hope after being in the
mine so long.
Du Bingjian, a mine disaster expert who was brought in to help said quote, “In all my
30 years doing this, this was the most trying and the most difficult rescue.”
1 - Just half Let’s just say that construction or planning
isn’t the best in China.
Even when it comes to demolitions, they’ve found a way to make it even more interesting.
During a demolition in the southern city of Liuzhou, everything went wrong.
Instead of a building collapsing to a pile of rubble, one half of the building tumbled
and fell sideways, landing somehow safely without hitting anything.
The other half just stayed up, slightly tilted to the side, sorta like the leaning tower
of Pisa.
Obviously, the reason the buildings didn’t crumble the way it was supposed to was because
of technical issues.
The demolition team had to resort to using a crane to destroy the other half of the building
that was left standing.
Hey, you win some and you lose some, and then you dim sum.
Am I right?!
Here's what's next!