By AFP

TAIPEI: Seven people -- five of them firefighters -- died in a fire that broke out late Saturday in an electronics factory in northern Taiwan, the local fire department said.

The inferno raged through the eight-floor building of a circuit board maker, located in an industrial district in Taoyuan City.

Seven firefighters were trapped by large fallen objects as they tried to search for people inside the factory.

They were rescued early Sunday but only two survived. The two others killed were factory workers from Thailand.

Seven other firefighters were injured, five of them suffering burns from an unidentified liquid, according to the fire department.

Traces of diesel and toxic chemicals were also found at the scene, it said.

The disaster follows a string of recent accidents in Taiwanese factories, raising questions about safety standards.

A huge fire broke out at a refinery of the state-run CPC Corporation in January, also in Taoyuan. There were no injuries in that incident.

In December, six Vietnamese workers were killed in another Taoyuan factory blaze that erupted in the middle of the night.

The workers were found to have been staying in an illegal dormitory at the factory, highlighting the often sub-standard living conditions for migrant workers on the island. </s> Taiwan is mourning the deaths of five firefighters and two Thai migrant workers in a weekend blaze at a computer equipment factory.

The fire broke out Saturday night at a plant belonging to Chin Poon Industrial in the city of Taoyuan just south of the capital, Taipei, the official Central News Agency reported.

CNA said the firefighters had lost contact with colleagues outside and became trapped under heavy equipment. Another seven firefighters were injured in the blaze, it said.

It quoted Chin Poon spokesman Hsiao Kung-yen as saying Sunday that the first fire alarm sounded in an area where thin layers of polymer are applied to printed circuit boards.

Large amounts of flammable chemicals apparently fueled the blaze and five firefighters were injured by being splashed with caustic and acidic materials. A total of 189 firefighters and 67 trucks and ambulances were sent to the scene of the fire, CNA said.

The company has been cited on previous occasions for safety violations, the news agency said. </s> BEIJING (AP) — Taiwan is mourning the deaths of five firefighters and two Thai migrant workers in a weekend blaze at a computer equipment factory.

The official Central News Agency said the fire broke out Saturday night at the plant belonging to Chin Poon Industrial in the city of Taoyuan outside the capital, Taipei.

CNA said the firefighters had lost contact with colleagues outside and became trapped under heavy equipment.

It said another seven firefighters were injured in the blaze.

CNA quoted Chin Poon spokesman Hsiao Kung-yen as saying Sunday that the first fire alarm sounded in an area where thin layers of polymer are applied to printed circuit boards. Large amounts of flammable chemicals apparently fueled the blaze. </s> Five firemen, two migrant workers killed in Taiwan fire

A massive inferno raged inside a printed circuit board manufacturer in Taoyuan City Saturday night, killing five firemen and two migrant workers, with two firefighter listed in serious condition, the city's fire department said Sunday, Focus Taiwan reports.

The department said that seven firefighters lost contact with their team after they raced to battle the blaze that broke out at Chin Poon Industrial at around 9 p.m. Saturday to rescue several migrant workers believed to be trapped inside the factory.

However, five of the firemen were found killed later, reportedly from a collapsed structure which trapped them. Two others were rescued with serious injuries.

Lu Tsung-yu, the first of the firemen to be rescued, was found at 00:50 a.m. Sunday, the department said. Lin Wei-hsi, another fireman, was found at around 4 a.m. Sunday. Both of them are hospitalized in serious condition. </s> – No Vietnamese workers have been found injured or dead in a massive fire that broke out at a factory’s dormitory in Pingzhen District, Taoyuan city, Taiwan (China) around 9:00 pm on April 29.According to the Vietnam Economic and Cultural Office in Taipei, the deadly blaze has claimed lives of five local firefighters and some foreign workers, but not including Vietnamese.A total of 161 Vietnamese workers are working at Chin Poon Industrial Co., a rigid printed circuit board producer in Taoyuan. At the time of the fire, most of the workers were at work while some asked for a leave from work to meet friends.Shortly after the accident occurred, the Vietnam Economic and Cultural Office in Taipei coordinated with the Taoyuan authority and the Vietnamese brides’ association to provide foods and water for the affected workers. The office also asked the labour brokers, who introduced the Vietnamese workers to work in Taiwan, to work with the factory to offer them temporary accommodation.The Ministry of Foreign Affairs has directed the office to continue keeping a close watch on the incident and get updates on investigation findings from the local authority. The office was also tasked to cooperate with relevant agencies and companies to help the Vietnamese workers return to soon normal life.-VNA </s> (Bloomberg) -- A blast at a Taiwan-listed company’s factory in China on Sunday killed seven people, the government says, just over a week after an explosion in the same eastern province left scores dead.

The explosion at a metal-processing plant owned by Waffer Technology (Kunshan) Ltd. also injured five people, the government of Kunshan, which is in Jiangsu province and borders Shanghai, said in a post on its Weibo social media account. The blast was caused by a container of scrap metal bursting into flames and setting a workshop ablaze just after 7 a.m., the government said.

Waffer Technology (Kunshan) is a major production base for Taiwan-listed Waffer Technology Corp., according to the latter’s website.

The industrial accident comes 10 days after an explosion at chemical plant in Chenjiagang, Jiangsu province. The official Xinhua News Agency updated the death toll for that incident to 78 on March 25. Police took people into custody over the incident in Chenjiagang, Xinhua reported earlier.

China has been seeking to make workplaces safer after industrial accidents that included a massive explosion in 2015 at a chemical warehouse in the northern port city of Tianjin that killed 173 people. A blast in 2014 at an auto-parts plant in Suzhou, also in Jiangsu, killed 146 people.

To contact Bloomberg News staff for this story: Dandan Li in Beijing at dli395@bloomberg.net

To contact the editors responsible for this story: Andrew Davis at abdavis@bloomberg.net, Philip Glamann, Stanley James </s> Image copyright EPA Image caption The fire was believed to have started in a patient ward

At least nine people have been killed in a fire at a hospital in Taiwan, state media has reported.

The fire broke out on a ward on the seventh floor of the hospital in New Taipei City early on Monday.

About 16 other people, including patients and staff, remain in a critical condition.

The cause of the fire is not yet clear, though media reports say it could have been started by an electrical fault in a moveable bed.

Reports say 33 patients and three staff members were evacuated from the Weifu hospital in the northern region of the city after a fire broke out at 04:36 on Monday (20:36 GMT Sunday).

Image copyright EPA Image caption 16 people remain in critical condition

According to state media outlet CNA, police found that the ward was not equipped with "required smoke exhaust equipment".

The BBC's Cindy Sui in Taipei says fires are common in Taiwan where fire prevention measures are not strictly enforced.

In 2012, a hospital fire left 12 patients killed and at least 60 more injured. </s> BEIJING/SHANGHAI (Reuters) - A major explosion at a chemical plant in southwestern China has killed 19 people and injured 12, authorities said on Friday, the latest deadly industrial incident in the world’s largest producer of chemicals.

It comes amid a drive to strengthen industrial safety, with China ramping up checks over the last year, in the wake of some high-profile incidents at coal mines and chemical plants.

The cause of Thursday evening’s blast at Yibin Hengda Technology in an industrial park several hours southeast of Chengdu, the capital of the southwestern province of Sichuan, is not yet known, the local government in Jiang’an county said.

“I heard seven explosions in ten minutes,” an eyewitness told domestic news agency Beijing News. “It took a couple dozen firefighter trucks to put out the fire.”

The injured are in stable condition and an investigation has begun, state news agency Xinhua said.

The company, which makes chemicals for the food and pharmaceutical industries, did not immediately answer telephone calls from Reuters to seek information.

Photographs on Chinese social media showed a huge fire and plumes of smoke rising from the facility. The fire, which broke out early on Thursday evening, was put out by 11:30 p.m. (1530 GMT), the government said in its statement.

“I heard a big explosion, it was really loud and I felt the ground shaking,” Liu Ping, a manager from the industrial park told China Newsweek, who was in his office at the time of the eruption.

“My first response was that something was wrong and I went the window and saw thick smoke rising from the east.”

A trio of three-storey buildings were reduced to their steel frames by the explosion, the Sichuan Daily newspaper said, citing eyewitness accounts. Footage on its website on Friday afternoon showed the skeleton of the burnt-out buildings.

Windows of nearby buildings were shattered by the explosion at the factory, which is surrounded by a sand and gravel plant, it added.

The plant has three production lines, making 300 tonnes per year (tpy) of benzoic acid, which is used in food preservatives, and 2,000 tpy of 5-nitroisophthalic acid, for medicines and dyes, the regional environmental protection bureau says.

China’s breakneck pace of economic growth during the last decade has resulted in a spate of industrial accidents.

In 2015, an explosion in a chemical warehouse in the northern port city of Tianjin killed 165 people. Last year, a blast at a petrochemical plant in eastern Shandong province killed eight people and injured nine. </s> Nine people were killed and 16 were injured in a blaze that broke out early Monday morning at a hospice in Taiwan, fire officials said.

All of the 36 people inside, including three staff, were evacuated after the fire started in the palliative care facility on the seventh floor of the nine-storey Ministry of Health and Welfare Taipei Hospital in New Taipei City.

Sixteen had cardiac arrests and seven were revived. Smoke inhalation was given as the cause of death for the nine people who died, according to the local fire service.

The city’s fire service chief Huang Te-ching said the cause of the fire was being investigated and denied reports that the sprinkler system had malfunctioned.

“The sprinkler device was on but there’s some distance between its location and where the fire started so the fire couldn’t be immediately put out,” he told reporters.

Central News Agency, said citing the fire service, that a foreign carer reported a spark on a bed in the hospice ward at 4:36am on Monday, but by the time emergency crews arrived, the fire had spread throughout the ward.

The blaze was extinguished at 5:27am, the department said, adding that it was probably caused by a short circuit in the life support system on the hospice ward.

Footage from a surveillance camera broadcast on local media showed staff rushing through the hospice corridors, carrying patients out in their arms or in wheelchairs to evacuate them after the fire broke out.

The injured were rushed to several nearby hospitals.

The 16 injured remain in hospital, with 10 listed as being in a serious condition, the local TVBS news network reported.

Local media quoted some patients’ relatives as saying they heard a blast and suspected that an oxygen tank might have exploded, causing the fire.

Taiwan’s Premier William Lai apologised to the public and expressed condolences over the tragedy.

“We will review the cause of the incident to prevent a similar situation from happening again,” he said.
A fire in a circuit board factory in Taoyuan City, Taiwan, kills seven people including five firefighters. It is the city's third major industrial fire this year.