Heat pipe blast rips through road

Heat pipe blast rips through road

• Source: Global Times
• [08:23 March 17 2011]
• Comments

A heating pipe vents steam after it exploded at Sidaokou intersection, in Haidian district, Wednesday. Photo: Wang Zi

By Xu Tianran

A heating pipe explosion ripped through the road surface at Sidaokou intersection in Haidian district Wednesday morning, injuring several people and cutting off traffic. Authorities have yet to determine the cause of the accident.

Lin Na was driving through the intersection at about 9:20 am when the pavement before her exploded.

"I could see nothing but white steam in front of me," Lin recalled. "The sound of debris, big and small, landing on my car was horrible. The biggest piece that hit my car was the size of a brick," she told the Global Times.

Lin swerved left to avoid the blowout and collided with a bus, damaging her Skoda's right headlight and the front of the No 6 special route bus.

"The sound of the explosion lasted for about two hours," Lin said. "Luckily there were not so many people there."

Police had already cordoned off the site when a Global Times reporter arrived, but a woman surnamed Wu, who lives in a building at the southeast corner of Sidaokou, recounted that after the explosion, a column of water gushed from the hole in the pavement as high as the 12th floor of her apartment.

"I encountered three people whose feet had been burned by the steam and advised them to take a taxi to the No 304 hospital," Wu told the Global Times.

A nurse with the burn department of the No 304 hospital confirmed that three people injured in this morning's blast went to the hospital for treatment.

"One of them has been hospitalized, and the other two left the hospital after treatment," the nurse said.

The Beijing News reported that seven people were hurt and three have been hospitalized.

For over three hours after the accident, a cloud of steam billowed 90 meters into the air from a six to seven meter-wide hole in the intersection's pavement. Water from the pipe had gushed onto the road, but was later brought under control by the Beijing District Heating Group. The steam appeared to have lessened by 1 pm.