12,000 Taiwanese return to homes after gas blasts

The 12,000 people who fled in fear of more gas pipeline explosions in Taiwan’s second-largest city returned to their homes after authorities said there was no more risk of blasts like the series that devastated a more than 2 square kilometres area, killing 26 people and injuring 267.

With clean-up work under way, investigators were turning to the task of determining the cause of the blasts, the industrial city’s worst such disaster in 16 years. Most of the four ruptured street sections in the densely populated district of Kaohsiung had been declared safe from further explosions by afternoon, a city spokesman said. A fire in a 10-yard-long section that burned through the night had also been put out.

Five explosions ripped through four streets starting around midnight Thursday, catapulting cars into the air and blasting cement rubble at passers-by, many of whom were out late because of a nearby night market.

That came about three hours after a gas leak had been reported on Kaixuan Road, but emergency services had been unable to locate the source.

Four firefighters were among the victims and two were missing, while at least six fire trucks were flung into the rubble.

The blasts sent flames shooting into the sky and hurled concrete through the air, leaving broad, metre-deep trenches down the middle of roads.

Many of the injured were still receiving emergency treatment. The disaster was Taiwan’s second in as many weeks following the crash of a TransAsia Airways prop jet on the island of Penghu on July 23 that killed 48 people and injured 10.