BEIJING — A fire at an unlicensed shoe factory killed 37 people and injured more than a dozen, Chinese authorities said Monday in one of the deadliest industrial accidents this year in a country plagued with dangerous workplaces.
The fire started Sunday night in a workshop making shoe uppers, said a woman surnamed Zhou in the information office of the Communist Party committee in Putian, an export manufacturing town in southeastern Fujian province. It was likely caused by an electric wire that caught fire, according to a spokesman for the city police. None of the 56 workers at the factory escaped unhurt.
Putian is a center of shoe manufacturing in China, and the export business has helped turn Fujian into one of the country's most prosperous provinces.
While China's coal mines are known to be the world's most dangerous, safety violations are also rife in the country's many factories.
Front Section, Pages 5 on 10/23/2007