Deadly gas explosion rocks Belgium
Friday, July 30, 2004 Posted: 1548 GMT (2348 HKT)
The explosion occurred about 30 minutes after a leak was reported.
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BRUSSELS, Belgium — At least 10 people were killed and 100 others injured when a leaking underground natural gas pipeline exploded in southern Belgium, officials said.
The blast occurred about 8:30 a.m. Friday as workers were repairing the leak. Firefighters and police responding to the leak were among the dead, officials said.
The explosion in the industrial area of Ghislenghien, about 30 kilometers (20 miles) southeast of Brussels, happened after construction workers pierced the underground line, The Associated Press quoted acting provincial governor Guy Petit as telling Belgian media.
Local officials initially said 15 people were killed, as did Belgian news media, and the Belgian Health Ministry originally reported 14 dead.
But later Friday Health Ministry spokesman Michele Vanderplaetsen said the government could confirm only 10 deaths, AP reported.
Interior Minister Patrick Dewael said several of the dead were firefighters who were setting up a security perimeter after the leak was reported.
The regional civil protection agency gave a provisional figure of at least 100 wounded, while the Health Ministry said 200 were wounded, including 100 burn victims. The reason for the discrepancies among the casualty reports was unclear.
The explosion sent huge fireballs into the air, flung bodies hundreds of yards, burned two factories and left a large crater between them.
One witness described it as a “mini-Hiroshima.”
“There were bodies in parking lots, in the fields; burned-out cars in an area half a kilometer wide,” Reuters quoted fire department spokesman Francis Boileau as saying.
“It looks like a war zone. … There were people fleeing who I am sure we will find too late in the fields several hundred yards away.”
French and Belgian emergency teams, including Belgian army units and dozens of ambulances, converged on the scene. Victims with severe burns were taken by helicopter to hospitals across Belgium.
Area residents were told to stay indoors and keep their windows and doors closed to keep out heavy smoke, but the Health Ministry said the smoke was not toxic.
Police closed a stretch of the E429 motorway, which links Brussels to Lille and Calais, France, but no evacuation was ordered.
Aftermath of the explosion at Ghislenghien, Belgium
The blast shook the ground like an earthquake and could be seen and felt several kilometers (miles) away, witnesses told Belgian media.
Eyewitness Olivier Rampelberg, who lives about 3 km (2 miles) from the scene, said he heard a sound like a thunderclap.
“It sounded like continuous thunder,” Reuters quoted him as telling RTBF television. “Then little grains of scorched earth rained down.”
Another witness told a radio reporter: “It sounded as if a plane had crashed. All the windows shook. It was terrible, terrible,” Reuters said.
The line, one meter (yard) in diameter, carries gas from the Belgian port of Zeebrugge to northern France. Fluxys, which runs the country’s network of gas pipelines, confirmed the gas leak led to the explosion.
The company said its employees were not among the injured, and that disruptions to the region’s gas supply were minor.
Prime Minister Guy Verhofstadt returned from his holiday in Italy to visit the disaster site, his office said.
It was the deadliest disaster in Belgium since 14 people were killed in a motorway pile-up in thick fog in 1996, Reuters said.
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