A fire in a slaughterhouse in north-eastern China has killed at least 119 people, making it one of the country's deadliest factory accidents in decades.
About 350 workers were on site at the slaughterhouse and meat processing plant owned by Baoyuanfeng Poultry company in Mishazi township, Jilin province, when it was rocked by explosions at about 6am on Monday, Chinese state media reported. About 100 workers managed to escape from the plant, while others were trapped inside by a locked factory gate.
The fire has been mostly extinguished, and rescue work is still underway, the China News Service reported. The death toll is expected to rise, an unnamed provincial government media official told the Associated Press. Police have evacuated residents nearby.
"I started working at 6am along with another 100 workers in my workshop. There were two workshops in the plant," Wang Fengya, a 44-year-old female worker who escaped the inferno with light injuries, told China's official newswire, Xinhua.
"Soon after, someone shouted: 'Run away!' and we quickly ran to the exit, which is about 40 metres away from my seat. Suddenly, the lights inside went out and the plant got quite dark ... when I finally ran out and looked back at the plant, I saw high flames," she said.
State media blamed the explosions and fire on an electrical problem and a chemical ammonia leak – the gas is commonly used as a coolant in meat processing plants, which are typically kept at near-freezing temperatures. Flammable foam insulation in the plant's walls may have also contributed to the blaze, the Associated Press reported.
The state broadcaster CCTV quoted workers as saying that the fire occurred between shifts and may have started in a locker room.
China's president, Xi Jinping, and its premier, Li Keqiang, have ordered an investigation into the cause of the accident.
"Any fatal casualties over 100 that's not a natural disaster will make the government very nervous, in fear of possible social unrest," Willy Wo-lap Lam, an adjunct history professor at the Chinese University of Hong Kong told Bloomberg. "This should serve as a big lesson for the government to put on even more stringent safety checks and to crackdown on any project corruption."
The plant was built in 2009 and produces 67,000 tonnes of chicken products annually, Xinhua reported. "Firefighters say the interior layout of the plant is complicated, and the exits are very narrow," according to ChinaView TV.
Guo Yan, 39, told Xinhua that she tried to escape, but the emergency exit to her workstation was blocked. "I could only crawl desperately forward," she said. "I worked alongside an old lady and a young girl, but I don't know if they survived or not."
The fire's death toll rose throughout the day, from more than 60 at about 2pm to 92 an hour later, and to 119 by early evening. Pictures posted to the popular web portal Netease show firefighters spraying down the large white building, its walls warped and charred, its roof disintegrating.
"It's a tragedy of immense proportions," said Geoff Crothall, communications director for the Hong Kong-based advocacy group China Labour Bulletin. "Certainly for factory fires I cannot think of anything that compares with this."
Crothall said that while coal mine explosions in China have been known to kill hundreds of workers, the scope of Monday's blaze is "really unprecedented" for factory accidents — the most comparable incident occurred in November, 1993, when a fire at a plastic toy factory in Shenzhen killed 80 people, most of them young women.
"Up until now, that was the benchmark for factory tragedies in China," Crothall said. "And in fact it came as such a shock at the time, that it was one of the main reasons for the drafting of China's first labour law in 1994."
The fire is China's deadliest since 2000, when a Christmas Day blaze at a nightclub in Luoyang, Henan province killed 309 people.
Crothall said that China's fire safety record is poor by international standards, adding that the problem generally lies with enforcement rather than legislation.
"Workplace safety is still a fairly low priority, below profit and productivity," he said. "I see no sign that factory bosses or governments are taking the issue as seriously as they should."