BEIJING (AP) -- A burst natural gas well, possibly pierced in a drilling mistake, spewed out toxic fumes, killing at least 191 people in southwest China and forcing 31,000 people to flee their homes, state media said Thursday.
The death toll was high even by the appalling standards of China's accident-plagued industry, where coal mine explosions and other disasters kill dozens at a time, totaling thousands every year.
As residents in a 3-mile radius were evacuated, technicians tried to stop the deadly leak of natural gas and hydrogen sulfide that erupted Tuesday night from the gas field at the town of Gaoqiao, the state-run Xinhua news agency reported.
They ignited the gas streaming from the wellhead Wednesday to burn away the toxic fumes and planned to attempt to plug the well with cement and earth-moving equipment. Photos released by Xinhua showed flames shooting up into the night sky.
At a makeshift hospital, 200 to 300 people were being treated for gas poisoning and chemical burns, the Web site of the state newspaper China Daily reported. Photos showed women and children with blistered faces, some breathing from oxygen tanks parked beside their beds.
A hospital employee was quoted as saying other clinics received ``large numbers'' of patients.
``There are farmers and miners, old and young, men and women,'' the unidentified employee said. ``Some died after they arrived here.''
The cause of the disaster at the Chuandongbei gas field wasn't clear. Xinhua said it involved a drilling mishap that broke open a gas well, but didn't give details. Qian Zhijia, the field's deputy director, said the blowout should be brought under control by late Friday, Xinhua said.
About 31,000 people living within three miles of the well were evacuated Tuesday night, Xinhua said. The town is 210 miles northeast of Chongqing, a city of millions, where it was unclear whether local media would be allowed to report the disaster's extent. The government often orders media to carry only brief Xinhua reports about major accidents, trying to limit the amount of information released to the public.
Xinhua reported Wednesday that only eight people were killed in the accident and said the blowout already was under control.
A man who answered the phone Thursday evening at the editor-in-chief's office of one of Chongqing's major newspapers, the Chongqing Evening News, said it had received no new information since the earlier report of eight deaths. The man, who wouldn't give his name, expressed surprise when told of the reported higher death toll, saying, ``Is that possible?''
Xinhua said special teams were searching the area for other possible victims, and a team of officials led by the general secretary of China's Cabinet rushed to the scene from Beijing.
President Hu Jintao and other Chinese leaders ordered local authorities to ``go all out to rescue victims, prevent poisonous gas from spreading further and reduce casualty,'' the report said.
The disaster came amid sweeping government efforts to tighten industrial safety in China and reduce the carnage in a country with one of the world's highest rates of workplace deaths.
Despite the crackdown, the number of deaths in China's mines and factories jumped nearly 9 percent in the first nine months of this year to 11,449, according to the government.
Fatal accidents often are blamed on lack of required fire equipment and indifference to safety rules by managers.
State television reported the gas field disaster Thursday as the second item on its national evening newscast but gave no death toll.
The gas field is run by the Sichuan Petroleum Administration, part of state-owned China National Petroleum Corp., Xinhua said.
