Workshop fire in eastern China kills at least 18

USPA News - At least eighteen people were killed Sunday and more than a dozen others were injured when a fire ripped through a workshop in eastern China, state-run media reported on Monday. It was not immediately known whether others remained unaccounted-for.

The incident happened at around 7 p.m. local time on Sunday when a fire broke out at a carrot packaging workshop in the city of Shouguang, which is located in eastern Shandong province. It took firefighters about 2.5 hours to put out the blaze, the state-run Xinhua news agency reported. Xinhua said at least eighteen people were killed in the blaze, while thirteen others were being treated at a local hospital, where their conditions were not immediately released. It was not clear whether anyone else was still missing. The managers of the workshop, which belonged to Longyuan Food Co., Ltd., were detained by police as they investigated the cause of the fire. The rapid economic growth in China, in combination with poor safety measures, frequently result in deadly industrial accidents. On August 2, at least 75 people were killed and 180 others were injured when a powerful explosion as the result of negligence hit a factory in eastern China, making it one of the country`s worst industrial accidents in recent years.