Dive Brief:
- At least 74 workers are dead and two injured in the wake of a Nov. 24 platform and scaffolding collapse at a $1.1 billion coal power plant project in China's Jiangxi Province, according to USA Today.
- The workers were building the interior wall of a new cooling tower when the platform on which they were working — 200 feet in the air — collapsed, according to The New York Times.
- Chinese officials arrested 13 individuals connected with the incident and said their investigation centered around the plant's engineering firm, Hebei Yineng, which has had previous job site fatalities and is working on several power plants at once.
Dive Insight:
According to The Times, the platform fell after a crane collapsed, but authorities have not yet released a definitive cause of the accident. The tower is expected to be complete in 2018, and prior to the collapse, workers had completed 230 of its 541 feet.
China has an unenviable record when it comes to worker safety, and, according to The Times, experts have pointed the finger at corruption, a desire to keep the country's sluggish economic engine running and "lax enforcement of safety rules" as causes for such a high fatality rate. From January through June of this year, more than 24,000 Chinese workers were injured, while more than 14,100 died. However, that figure is a 5.3% improvement from the first half of 2015.
While that is modest progress, it seems that adhering to modern standards of a safe workplace has been an issue for Chinese construction officials. Almost one year ago, a catastrophic landslide, initiated by piles of construction debris, killed about 70 people in Shenzhen. According to witnesses, construction crews had been dumping their waste material on a hill above residences and businesses for two years when it became unstable. The slide destroyed more than 30 factories, worker and other residences and many additional buildings. The dumpsite was one of a dozen set up by government officials to accommodate the waste put out by that area's booming construction industry.