Schools to open on time in shaken Tianjin

More than 300 grade schools in the Chinese neighborhood shaken by this month’s deadly blasts will start the fall semester on time, the district government of Binhai in the port city of Tianjin said yesterday.
All the schools in the district had completed registration work for classes to start today, and students affected by the disaster will return to the classroom, the district said.
The Aug. 12 explosions at a warehouse storing dangerous chemicals killed 150 people and left 23 others missing. It was one of China worst industrial accidents in years.
The tragedy exposed the country’s lax enforcement of work safety regulations and revealed widespread dereliction of duties across government agencies. The warehouse in this case was located too close to homes and stored too much hazardous material.
At least 11 government officials — from agencies overseeing transportation, port operations, workplace safety, planning and land resources, and customs — have been detained and are faced with charges of dereliction of duty and abuse of power. China’s top prosecuting office said the officials should not have issued the warehouse the permit to handle hazardous material and that they failed to regulate the operations at the warehouse.
Police also have detained 12 executives and employees of the company running the warehouse as part of their investigation, and are also looking into a company suspected of providing bogus safety assessments.
The local government said schools damaged by the explosions have been repaired in time for the fall semester. AP

Workers overcome by toxic gas at paper mill, 7 die, 2 hurt

Workers were overcome with toxic gas from a paper mill’s waste pool and seven of them died, authorities said Saturday, in China’s latest deadly accident involving dangerous chemicals.
A worker who was cleaning the pool filled with pulp paper waste fell in and his co-workers rushed to help but were overcome with the noxious gas themselves, a statement from the Anxiang county government in Hunan province said. Seven workers died and two were injured.
The statement on Friday’s accident didn’t say what type of toxic gas was involved.
Separately, firefighters and environmental response crews were rushing to clean up about 15 tons of sulfuric acid spilled early Saturday from a crashed tanker truck in the eastern province of Zhejiang.
The driver and a passenger in the truck were killed when it veered off the road into farmland near the resort city of Hangzhou and about 10 kilometers from major waterways.
The pair of incidents follows China’s worst industrial accident in recent years, a massive explosion at a warehouse storing toxic chemicals in the port of Tianjin that killed at least 147.
Nationwide safety checks were ordered after the Aug. 12 disaster, focusing especially on the storage of dangerous chemicals.
Another worker was killed and nine injured in an explosion at a chemical plant in the eastern city of Zibo on Aug. 22. AP