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.