Transporting explosives

At least 20 workers have been killed in a blast as they were working on a new road tunnel in China’s Hunan province.    State media says the accident happened while explosives were being unloaded from a vehicle.    Another four workers were pulled out of the tunnel alive.

The country is often criticised for poor safety standards.    Last November, three vehicles carrying explosives caught fire and blew up in south-western China, killing at least seven people and injuring about 200.

Perhaps the deadliest ever incident involving the transporting of explosives happened at Cali in Colombia in 1956.      A convoy of seven army lorries loaded with dynamite had been parked outside a barracks on the night of August 6, and in the early hours of the next morning, an explosion ripped through them.

It flattened the barracks and eight blocks of buildings, killing at least 1,300 people.    The cause was never clearly established.   At first, the military government said it was sabotage, but others thought it was an accident perhaps caused by the trucks overheating.

* Here I am in 1974 on the front line of the social revolution, exposing sex discrimnation at a bus depot.   http://www.macearchive.org/archive.html?Title=21182