Home > Belgian explosion toll rises to 16
ATH: The death toll from Belgium’s worst industrial disaster in recent history has risen to16 and the number is expected to edge still higher as doctors struggle to save victims of the massive gas explosion.
"We fear that the (number of) fatalities will worsen," Renaud Witmeur, the health minister’s chief of staff, said yesterday.
Described by one witness as a "mini-Hiroshima", the chain of explosions on Friday in the industrial zone of Ghislenghien threw massive flames into the air, flattened buildings, hurled bodies hundreds of metres (yards) and set fire to vehicles.
About 40 per cent of the 120 injured suffered life-threatening burns, Witmeur said. Survivors said they felt their skin burning off as they ran from the inferNo
The 16th victim died in hospital early yesterday.
Among the dead were five firefighters killed as they set up a security cordon around a leaky underground gas pipeline when the blast occurred.
Their colleagues mourned as wellwishers laid flowers near the fire station in Ath, more than 40km (25 miles) southwest of Brussels, near the devastated site.
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Shocked by the ferocity of the blast, Belgians crowded into Red Cross offices to donate blood, trying to do anything they could to help the wounded.
King Albert spoke to families of victims and visited the scene where rescue workers cleared debris and investigators sought the cause of the explosion.
Prime Minister Guy Verhofstadt cut short his holiday and called for a national day of mourning when the dead are buried.
Pascal Picry, who was working in a nearby building when the blast sent the roof crashing down, said he barely got out alive.
"The first reflex that we had was to run (and) it was only when we got out that we started to burn from the heat. We felt our skin coming off," he told local RTBF television, his head and arms in bandages.
Public prosecutors have started a probe into the explosion, which left many people questioning the area’s planning laws.
"I don’t understand how you can authorise (the construction of) buildings next to pipelines like that," one witness told RTBF radio.
Fluxys, which operates the country’s network of gas pipelines, is helping with the investigation.
The explosion tore through a section of a pipeline carrying gas from the Belgian port of Zeebrugge to France. It was the deadliest gas explosion in Belgium since 1967, when a truck carrying liquid gas blew up, killing 22 people.
In the country’s worst industrial catastrophe, 262 people died in a mine explosion at Marcinelle in 1956, including 136 Italian migrant workers.