[Caution: this post contains content that may be upsetting to some readers]

A tragedy at a local supermarket in Ankang, Shaanxi has claimed the life of a young boy when a storage locker used by customers at the store entrance unexpectedly fell down this past Monday evening.

Surveillance video shows an unidentified woman accompanied by her 6 year-old son removing something from the locker. Just thirteen seconds after first using the locker, the entire two meter-high cabinet unexpectedly falls forward onto the pair.

After falling, the boy is no where to be seen, while the right leg of the woman is trapped under the storage locker. Immediately, people at the scene race over to lift the storage locker to free the victims. Once the locker is lifted up, a pool of blood can be seen on the ground.

The boy was sent to hospital, but died from his injuries. The woman received a fracture right leg from the incident, and remains in hospital.

A reporter from the China Economic Report said the supermarket has been closed since the accident, and the locker has since been removed. However, the reporter noted that the storage locker was positioned on top of a ten centimeter-high concrete pedestal that had a slight inclination.

A local resident said the supermarket had put wooden boards underneath the locker to help balance it. The boards are clearly visible in the surveillance video after the locker falls down.

The supermarket had been open for just two weeks before the incident occurred. The manager, a man named Yang, said the store’s many customers had likely shifted the locker’s position, leading to its eventual fall.

Local police say an investigation is ongoing. The supermarket has already provided some compensation for the victim’s medical fees.

This past October, another shocking surveillance video of a supermarket showed a father accidentally killing his own child by falling backwards on top of him.

The post Tragedy as Shaanxi Supermarket Storage Locker Falls and Kills 6 Year Old Boy appeared first on The Nanfang.

The force of impact caused wide-scale damage to apartments in the surrounding neighborhood in the town of Xinmin, blowing out windows and doors. The ad hoc living quarters where the blast occurred has completely disintegrated, leaving behind a 4 meter-diameter crater.

Ninety-four people were injured. Fortunately there was a hospital next door, unfortunately it was so damaged it was unable to accept the large volume of injured people. Residents had to flag down passing cars to get rides to other nearby hospitals.

Victims were seen walking around in a daze with bleeding head injuries, while the surrounding area looks like a war zone. Rescue attempts are still underway with reports saying more victims are trapped under the wreckage.

The cause of the explosion has yet to be determined. However, Caijing reports that local residents say the explosion may have been caused by a secret stash of explosives that was being kept in the basement of the temporary living quarters.

Earlier this month, a five story living unit that collapsed in Wenzhou, Zhejiang that killed over 20 people was determined to have been built by migrant workers who relocated there.

The post Shaanxi Explosion Kills 7 in Residential Neighborhood appeared first on The Nanfang.

Five survivors have been recovered by rescue crews from the ruins of the building, said to have collapsed at 4AM.

Early reports say some 20 people are suspected to have been living in the four apartments that collapsed. The five-story residential unit was an attached part of a townhouse complex in Wenzhou’s Lucheng District.

Dozens of rescuers were seen sifting through the wreckage by hand in order to reach trapped victims.

The cause of the collapse has not been determined. Southern Capital reported that steel reinforcing bars are not seen in the ruins of the collapsed building, which appears to be made from concrete bricks and wood.

A number of residential building collapses have occurred around China in recent years, causing a number of fatalities.

The collapse of a three-story building in Shanghai was caught on video this past March, while six people died in a six-story residential building collapse in Pingxiang, Jiangxi back in February.

Last year saw ten people die in a May apartment collapse in Guizhou, two people injured in a July apartment collapse in Hangzhou, and 17 people die in collapse during renovations for a building in Henan in October.

The post Building Collapse in Zhejiang Leaves 8 Dead appeared first on The Nanfang.

The elevator was carrying seven passengers at a residential complex when it suddenly stopped between the sixth and seventh floors early Monday morning. Tragically, the attempt to evacuate the trapped passengers resulted in a young couple falling through the elevator shaft.

The girl, 16, died at the scene. Her boyfriend, 18, died from his injuries after being transported to the hospital. The other five passengers were safely rescued.

The circumstances of how or why the couple fell down the elevator shaft remain unclear. As reported by Xinbei Net, neither the property management nor the remaining five passengers were willing to give statements.

Although reports say the elevator passed its annual safety inspection, Liaoshen Online said employees that work in the building are too afraid to take the elevator, and cited a similar incident from a month ago when building maintenance workers had to pry open the elevator doors to rescue passengers who were also stuck between floors.

So far this year, the Shenyang quality inspection bureau has received 27 complaints about elevators.

Shenyang has had issues with elevators before. A crowded elevator plunged in a 12 story free-fall in July last year, injuring 12 passengers.

Incidents resulting in fatalities have routinely involved elevators in China.

This past March, a Xi’an woman was found dead after being trapped in an elevator for month, which was turned off during the Spring Festival break. Last February, a mother and her newborn baby died when the elevator they were travelling on plunged 31 stories in Xi’an. And in July of last year, a man died after falling down an elevator shaft in Guangzhou.

The post Two People Fall To Their Deaths Through Elevator Shaft in Rescue Attempt appeared first on The Nanfang.

The inaugural flight of a Cessna 208B crashed into the Shanghai-Hangzhou Expressway No. 7835 Bridge during an attempted water takeoff. The flight was supposed to be the first in a new sightseeing service to the Zhoushan Archipelago.

Onboard the amphibious plane were the captain, co-pilot, and eight passengers, including a reporter and cameraman from Shanghai Television Station, and six district government workers.

The captain and four passengers, who were all sitting at the rear of the plane, were transported to Jinshan Hospital for medical treatment, and were reportedly in stable condition.

“Before takeoff, the seaplane had been taxiing on the water for about 20 minutes. It suddenly accelerated and turned left sharply. The co-pilot shouted ‘bridge!’ before the seaplane crashed onto it,” said cameraman Wu Liangliang.

Wu described the horrific experience: “It was like a dream,” he said. “My glasses and camera floated away and I saw several passengers in the front seats bleeding from their faces after the crash.”

Another survivor, Song Wanjun, the Deputy Director of the district’s news and media center, described how he escaped from the crash: “I pushed out several passengers sitting on the backseats and managed to escape from the back door after the plane crashed, but those sitting on the front seats failed to escape in time.”

The Civil Aviation Administration (CAAC) has launched an investigation, and is analyzing the information retrieved from the in-flight recorder (“black box”).

Joy General advertises itself as the first aviation company in China to widely use amphibious aircraft. The small airline offers short flights for tourists to nearby islands, in addition to sightseeing tours and charters.

The post Five Dead In Shanghai Airplane Crash appeared first on The Nanfang.

The one-vehicle collision occurred on a highway leading to Taoyuan Airport. Photos from the scene showed that the tour bus had broken through a highway guardrail, engulfed in flames with thick smoke billowing from the windows. The fire was later extinguished by local firefighters.

Mostly from Dalian in China’s northeast Liaoning Province, the tourists belonged to a tour group organised by the Julong Travel Agency. The youngest victim was just 12 years-old. Among the victims were the bus driver and the tour guide, both of whom were considered locals.

The bus involved in the crash has already come under scrutiny by news media. The bus was manufactured in May 2010, and was due for inspection on July 29. Previous inspections did not detect any problems; but, the bus was involved in five violations from 2012 to 2015, and at least one fine had been waived.

The post 26 Dead In Taiwan Tour Bus Crash appeared first on The Nanfang.

Last Saturday afternoon, a woman dropped her phone into a toilet that set off a chain reaction of successive tragedies. First, the woman’s husband, Niu Xiaofei, crawled down into the septic tank below the pit toilet to retrieve the phone, but fainted. When another man went after the husband to pull him out, he also fainted. A third man followed the second man, only to meet the same fate.

At this point, no one else was willing to go into the septic tank, so emergency services were called a half hour after the phone first dropped into the pit toilet. But when firefighters arrived, they realized that the enclosure was too small to allow them to perform the rescue while wearing a breathing apparatus. Faced with this dilemma, the rescuers decided to perform the rescue without the safety gear.

The firefighter given the task to perform the rescue, Liu Zhou, was able to secure harnesses to the first two men to have them pulled out. However, the fumes of the septic tank were also too strong for Liu, and he fainted on his descent to save the last victim. A second firefighter was called upon to go down into the septic tank and successfully rescue out Liu and the last victim.

Liu is said to be recovering from minor injuries, while the three victims are all said to have sustained major injuries. Their current conditions are unknown.

If this story seems familiar, it’s because it has happened a number of times before, and all have had fatal results.

• A Henan man and his mother both died while trying to retrieve his wife’s new mobile phone that had dropped into a septic tank in May 2014. Three other people were also injured in the rescue.
• Three Taiyuan residents died in July 2013 when trying to retrieve a phone that had fallen down a toilet into the septic tank.
• After their daughter fell down a toilet in June 2013 while trying to retrieve a dropped phone, a Handan mother and father also fell in, resulting in two deaths.
• A Yuncheng, Shanxi boy died while trying to retrieve his phone that fell inside a pit toilet in May 2010.
• A man named Zhang from Changzhou, Hubei died while helping his neighbor retrieve a phone accidentally dropped down a pit toilet in September 2008.

In just about all cases, reports don’t clarify if the phone was successfully retrieved.

The post With iPhone Lost, 3 People Dive into Septic Tank and Get Trapped appeared first on The Nanfang.

Located just north of Maoming, the Guangdong city of Xinyi was dealt the worst blow after being hit Saturday with 430 millimeters of rain in just six hours. The rains left eight people dead and four others missing in what is being called the worst storm to hit Xinyi in 200 years. As a result, the province’s Civil Affairs Bureau issued the second-highest state of emergency for the city.

In neighboring Guangxi, two people were killed, and 11,000 residents were evacuated from their homes. The torrential rains destroyed 15,900 hectares of crops and toppled 524 houses, costing the province an estimated 335 million yuan ($51 million). Another 18,000 were evacuated in the central province of Hunan.

Flooding and landslides due to heavy rains are an annual occurrence in southern Chinese provinces, notably in Guangdong, which saw its “storm of the century” hit the province in 2014.

The post Thousands Evacuated as Torrential Rains Hit Southern China appeared first on The Nanfang.

The selfie trend in China just keeps gaining popularity, particularly among Chinese women, and is responsible for a number of strange and interesting memes. But this is the first time a selfie has proven deadly.

Last week, an unidentified 19 year-old woman was struck and killed by a train near the village of Liantang, near Foshan, Guangdong. As eyewitnesses and a number of photos show, the woman was attempting to take a selfie of herself with the train approaching her from behind in the background.

The woman was pronounced dead at the scene by paramedics.

Witnesses say they attempted to warn the woman at the time, and that the train engineer blew the train horn before the collision.

The accident happened at an area famous for its fields of roses that attract tourists from around China during the spring. The railroad tracks run through the middle of the field.

Selfie fatalities have increased lately, and most commonly involve trains or falls from great heights.

Last month, a man died after he fell off Lion’s Rock Mountain in Hong Kong after attempting to take selfies of himself against the famous backdrop.

The post Woman Taking Selfie Killed By Passing Train appeared first on The Nanfang.

The two repairmen, from Shaanxi Kaiwen Mechanical and Electrical Equipment, did not personally inspect the elevator shaft before confirming it was empty. The repairmen have been arrested by Xi’an police, who are also investigating other members of the company, as well as the building’s property management, Xi’an Huicheng Property Management.

Although elevator accidents are common in China, this case seems to be garnering more attention as the accident appears to be directly caused by the workers’ negligence.  There are reports that the victim left a number of scratches on the inside of the elevator before she died.

Chinese news reports are quoting unnamed neighbors of the victim, who lived alone, that she suffered from mental illness. The claim has sparked outrage among netizens. “This has nothing to do with the fact that the deceased was mentally ill! Would a sane person have been able to survive a month in a lift?” demanded one Weibo user.

As BBC News reported, one Weibo user suggested that technology be used to ensure the safety and well-being of China’s most vulnerable: “Maybe we could have an app, where every day you tap on it twice, if after two days you haven’t tapped it, it would alert the police,” they suggested.

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