Firework Factory Blaze in Indonesia Kills at Least 47

TANGERANG, Indonesia (AP) — Indonesian police on Friday said they were questioning the owner of a fireworks factory that exploded into an inferno, killing at least 47 people working inside, and have identified one of the victims as a 14-year-old girl. Investigators were trying to determine the cause of Thursday's fire at the factory in Tangerang, near the Indonesian capital of Jakarta, and said they didn't want to speculate before the investigation is completed. Pramujoko, head of identification at a police hospital in east Jakarta, said one victim had been identified through dental records: a 14-year-old girl who police said was known as Surnah. The government has said it will investigate allegations of under-aged workers at the factory. Pramujoko, who uses one name, appealed to the dozens of families waiting for loved ones to be identified to provide the dental information of their missing relatives. Safety laws are inconsistently enforced or even completely ignored in Indonesia, a poor and sprawling archipelago nation where worker rights are often treated as a lower priority than economic growth and jobs. Most of the factory's 103 employees were young women earning about $3 a day. "We are now intensively questioning witnesses including the factory owner and manager," said Tangerang police chief Harry Kurniawan. As investigators tried to piece together what happened, relatives crushed by grief went to a police hospital's morgue in eastern Jakarta Friday morning ...
Source: JEMS: Journal of Emergency Medical Services News - Category: Emergency Medicine Authors: Tags: Major Incidents News Source Type: news