10 workers die, 4 injured after steel bars collapse at school
Print Edition
TEN construction workers were killed and four others injured when steel bars collapsed at one of Beijing’s most prestigious high schools yesterday.
The accident happened at the start of the school day, around 8:20am, at Tsinghua High School. No teachers or pupils were hurt, officials said.
Classrooms and other buildings used for lessons were also not affected, according to a statement from the Beijing municipal government, but the usual morning exercise session was canceled for all pupils.
The four injured workers were taken to hospital where last night they were said to be in a stable condition.
One of them, a woman surnamed Zhang, told the Associated Press that when the accident happened, she and her husband were busy binding steel bars together.
“They collapsed suddenly, and I heard loud noises,” she recalled.
She is being treated at the No. 306 Hospital of the People’s Liberation Army.
Beijing authorities have set up a special team to investigate the accident. Mayor Wang Anshun and other officials arrived at the scene as the investigation got under way.
The team’s initial findings are that steel bars used to reinforce concrete had collapsed.
Officials said police had detained a number of people “directly responsible for the accident,” but gave no more details.
A school official, surnamed Jiang, said the workers had been building a gymnasium.
Outside the school gates, where relatives of the victims were waiting to be allowed in, one man was in tears as he told how his cousin had been working there and that another worker at the site had called to tell him there had been an accident.
Another man, Wang Zhiquan, told AP that his nephew — Chen Haijun, 42, a migrant worker from Heilongjiang Province in northeast China — was one of the fatalities.
He said he wanted to visit the site and seek compensation because Chen was the sole breadwinner for a family that included two ill grandparents and two children.
“The Spring Festival, or the Chinese New Year, will be celebrated soon. I’m very sad that 10 workers lost their lives, and their families will never see their day of reunion,” was one online comment after news of the tragedy spread.
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