At least 4 killed as explosion rips though block; gas leak blamed

At least four people were killed and three more injured when a gas blast ripped through a residential building in Chaoyang district early on Monday.

The explosion occurred at 8:30 am in a three-story building off Heping Dongjie and started a blaze that took more than 200 firefighters about two hours to extinguish.

Rescuers were still searching for survivors in the rubble late into the evening. Police said they are not treating the incident as suspicious.

"I heard a massive bang and thought it was an earthquake," said a 77-year-old retired Sinopec researcher surnamed Dong, who lives about 200 yards away. "I only realized what was going on when the fire engines started to arrive."

Emergency teams were on the scene about five minutes after the blast. Once the fire was put out, an excavator was brought in to lift debris from those trapped beneath.

Zhang Gaochao of the Beijing fire bureau told China National Radio that three bodies were recovered at about 1 pm. Three survivors were also rushed to the nearby China-Japan Friendship Hospital for treatment. One of the dead was reported to be a passerby.

The force of the explosion was so strong that several properties and vehicles close to the apartment block were also damaged. The glass windows of a store across the street were completely shattered.

"The roof of my Hyundai Elantra is gone. It was destroyed with at least two other cars," said a man surnamed Sun in his 40s, who added that he had borrowed the vehicle from a friend to drive his 11-year-old daughter to visit a doctor that morning.

Students at the nearby Hepingli No 3 Primary School and Jingcheng Primary School were immediately evacuated following the blast.

Traffic control measures were imposed along Heping Dongjie, a busy street that connects the North Third Ring Road and North Second Ring Road. A burst water hydrant near Hepingdongqiao, which was broken as firefighters dealt with the deadly blaze, slowed down traffic to a crawl until about 2 pm.

The apartment building, which was built in the 1950s, houses roughly 40 families. Six of them are believed to have been directly caught up in the incident.

Dong said that residents had complained several times about the buildings gas maintenance service. "We've reported gas leaks from a well in front of the apartment, but the gas company did not repair it promptly," he said. "People had noticed a strong gas smell recently, although the firm claimed its workmen made repairs last week."

METRO was unable to contact a spokesman for Beijing Gas before going to press on Monday. However, an employee with its customer service hotline said the company tests gas lines within one day of a complaint and charges 20 yuan per call-out. Checks are not routine, he said.

Wang Wen contributed to the story.