Causes and lessons of five explosion accidents

This paper describes five disastrous explosion accidents that occurred in recent years that had serious consequences for lives and property. The five explosions were: 1) The explosion at a TNT workshop of a chemical factory, Liaoning province, on February 9, 1991 in which 17 employees died and 107 were injured; 2) The nitro-amine explosive production workshop of a chemical factory in Hubei province on June 27, 1992, which led to the deaths of 22 employees and 13 injuries; 3) An explosion in storage warehouses containing dangerous goods in Shenzhen City on August 5, 1993, where 141 were injured; 4) A explosion of a truck loaded with 1.05 million detonators on October 23, 1994 causing 5 deaths and 95 injuries; and 5) An RDX explosive accident in Hunan province on January 31, 1996 in which 134 people died and 17 were injured. In this paper, the causes of these accidents are described and the lessons to be learned from these accidents are summarized.Great changes and significant achievements have taken place and the national economy has been developing at high speed since China reform and open policy. But as far as safety in production is concerned, catastrophic explosion accidents have occurred in recent times and some of them have been exceptionally serious. The author has participated in the investigation of many explosion accidents, which brought about heavy casualties and great economic losses. The bitter experiences have given us many beneficial lessons written in blood from which we must try to avoid such similar unnecessary accidents. In this paper, the causes of five disastrous explosion accidents are analyzed and lessons learned from these accidents are summarized. Proposals for safety production are also put forward.