Patterns of Fatal Explosion Accidents in China

Abstract

Explosion accidents usually lead to serious fatality and disability. To investigate the patterns of Fatal Explosion Accidents (FEA), a database containing 1835 FEA that happened in China during 2001–2018 was built. Statistical analysis was made based on the year, month, time interval of day, day of week, province, type of accident, place of occurrence and severity of accident. The result shown that, (1) FEA were more likely to occur in November; (2) 08: 00-10: 00 and 14: 00-16: 00 were two time intervals of frequent accident occurrence; (3) hazardous chemical FEA mostly happened on Tuesday and Wednesday, whereas pressurized container FEA often happened on Saturday; (4) coal mine gas FEA still accounted for a dominant proportion with the highest fatality rate. In addition, the correlation was measured by calculating Cramer’s coefficients, which indicated that the severities and types of FEA were significantly correlated with month. To be specific, (1) major and extraordinarily serious FEA were more likely to occur in November; (2) most of gas FEA were observed in April; (3) gunpowder and dust FEA happened most commonly in May; (4) more fireworks FEA happened in November. The patterns found in this study will provide explosion accident prevention and control with references.