why is China facing such armaggedon type catastophies?
A Year of Disasters in China
Photo
Revelers caught in a stampede during a New Year’s Eve celebration on the Bund, a waterfront promenade in Shanghai.
Credit
Reuters
New Year’s Stampede
Just before midnight on New Year’s Eve, as hundreds of thousands of
revelers jostled along the waterfront in Shanghai to watch a light show,
a stampede erupted that ultimately killed 36 people and injured 49 others.
An
investigation later revealed that the police were not prepared to
handle the crowd, estimated at 300,000 people. Several officials,
including a district police chief and the local head of the Communist
Party, were charged with corruption and dismissed.
Photo
Rescue crews removed the bodies of victims from the capsized ship in June.
Credit
Xiao Yijiu/Xinhua, via Associated Press
Capsized Cruise Ship
The Oriental Star, a cruise ship
whose passengers were mainly pensioners, capsized in the Yangtze River
on June 1 in heavy rain and severe winds. More than 440 people on board
were killed, and only 12 survived.
One of those rescued was the
captain, Zhang Shunwen; he was arrested and criticized for not anchoring
the ship during the worst of the storm. A government investigation
found that the ship, also known as the Eastern Star, had been cited for
safety violations.
Photo
A view of Tianjin after explosions leveled part of the Binhai New Area.
Credit
China Stringer Network/Reuters
Warehouse Explosion
A series of explosions at a chemical warehouse
in Tianjin on Aug. 12 killed more than 150 people, injured more than
700 and flattened a large area of the city’s busy seaport. Many of the
casualties were firefighters who were trying to contain a blaze at a
site where large amounts of extremely volatile chemicals were stored
with minimal precautions, close to housing.
Several executives of
the company that owned the warehouse were arrested, and China’s chief
work safety regulator, Yang Dongliang, was placed under investigation by
the country’s anti-corruption agency.
Photo
Workers at a mine affiliated with Longmay Group, in Hegang. At another
mine in the same city, operated by a privately owned company, 19 miners
were killed in a fire.
Credit
Li Qiang for The New York Times
Coal-Mine Fires
Two deadly coal-mine explosions and fires a month apart were linked to poor safety practices, killing a total of 41 people.
On
Dec. 16, 19 coal miners died after being trapped for more than 24 hours
after a gas explosion and raging fire at a mine in Hegang, operated by a
small privately owned company. In November, 22 workers died in a fire
at a mine in Jixi, operated by the Longmay Group, a state-owned company.
Longmay
was severely criticized by work-safety authorities for poor
supervision, failing to repair conveyor belts in the mine and waiting
nine hours before reporting the fire to the relevant authorities.
Photo
Firefighters rested near collapsed buildings at the site of a landslide in Shenzhen.
Credit
China Network/Reuters
Landslide of Waste
A sodden mountain of excavated dirt and construction debris slid onto at least 33 buildings in an industrial area of Shenzhen on Dec. 20; at least 91 people were missing, according to the official Xinhua News Agency.
The
rain-soaked material had built up for nearly two years at the site of a
former quarry, Xinhua said, citing residents. Some residents complained
about a lack of official oversight that allowed the mound to grow
unchecked to a dangerous height. Other residents said that the factories
and worker dormitories built at the site were too weak to withstand the
slide.
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