Deadly Blast: 31 Killed in Cooking Gas Explosion at China BBQ Restaurant

At least 31 people were killed and seven others injured in a massive explosion at a restaurant in northwest China, authorities said Thursday.

The explosion was caused by cooking gas at a grill restaurant on the eve of a long weekend.

The official Xinhua News Agency said the explosion destroyed the restaurant at around 8:40 p.m. Wednesday on a busy street in Yinchuan, the capital of the Muslim Ningxia Hui Autonomous Region, where people had gathered ahead of the Dragon Boat Festival.

The online news site The Paper reported, quoting a member of the search and rescue team, that the explosion left many people unconscious and they needed to be removed from the shop. It added that among the victims were the elderly and high school students.

An hour before the explosion, the staff noticed the smell of cooking gas and discovered the gas tank valve was broken, according to Xinhua. The explosion occurred while an employee was changing the valve.

Xinhua said Chinese President Xi Jinping demanded urgent medical care for the injured and an overhaul of safety after the explosion. He urged efforts to quickly determine the cause of the accident and hold people accountable under the law.

Xi also said that all relevant regions and departments should address “all kinds of hidden dangers and dangers” and launch campaigns to promote workplace safety.

The authorities arrested nine people, including the owner of the restaurant, shareholders and employees. Their assets have also been frozen, according to Xinhua.

The newspaper said the explosion occurred at an outlet of Fuyang BBQ Restaurant, a chain of restaurants in Yinchuan famous for its grilled skewers and fried dishes.

The two-story restaurant seats 20 people on the ground floor and offers private dining rooms on the second floor where customers can also sing karaoke.

The newspaper cited a woman identified only by her surname Chen as saying she was about 50 meters (164 feet) from the restaurant when she heard the blast.

She described seeing two waiters walk out of the restaurant afterwards, one of whom immediately collapsed, while thick smoke billowed from the restaurant and a strong smell of cooking gas permeated the area.

The central government’s Ministry of Emergency Management said on social media that search and rescue work at the restaurant was completed early Thursday and investigators are working to determine the cause of the explosion.

The Dragon Boat Festival is a holiday dedicated to eating rice dumplings and racing boats run by teams of rowers. While the majority of Yinchuan’s population is Han Chinese, a third are Hui people, or Chinese Muslims.

Industrial accidents of this nature occur regularly in China, and are usually attributed to poor government oversight, corruption and cost-cutting measures by employers, and lack of safety training for employees.

At least nine people were killed in an explosion at a Chinese petrochemical plant, and three more died in a helicopter crash during the Labor Day holiday in China.

In February, 53 miners were killed in the collapse of a large open-pit coal mine in the northern region of Inner Mongolia, leading to numerous arrests, and four people were arrested over a fire at an industrial trading company in central China in November that killed them. 38 people.

The central government has pledged stronger safety measures since a 2015 explosion at a chemical warehouse in the northern port city of Tianjin killed 173 people, most of them firefighters and police officers. In that case, a number of local officials were accused of taking bribes to ignore safety violations.