A fire that broke out early Monday morning in a Chinese slaughterhouse has killed 119, state media reported. There are still some workers unaccounted for, although it’s unclear how many.
June 3, 2013

A fire that broke out early Monday morning in a Chinese slaughterhouse has killed 119, state media reported. There are still some workers unaccounted for, although it’s unclear how many. More than 300 workers were in the plant at the time, and China’s official news agency, Xinhua, reported that about 100 workers had managed to escape. “The complicated interior structure of the prefabricated house in which the fire broke out and the narrow exits have added difficulties to the rescue work,” Xinhua reported, although China’s safety record is infamously abysmal. People took to China’s social-media website Weibo to express their anger, writing things like “was this place ever regularly inspected by fire safety authorities?”

Reuters:

"Victims' relatives gathered outside the building to "demand the government investigate and announce the cause of the accident as soon as possible", Xinhua said.

Hong Kong's Phoenix Television cited family members as saying that the doors were always kept locked during working hours during which workers were forbidden to leave and that the slaughterhouse never carried out fire drills.

China's record is poor. Fire exits in factories are often locked or blocked and regulations can be easily skirted by bribing corrupt officials."

Many of China's most deadly industrial accidents happen in the large coal mining industry, in which more than 1,300 people died last year alone from explosions, mine cave-ins and floods.

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