Pregnant woman ‘left to die in hospital corridor’ after Qingdao oil pipeline blast

[WedgeAntilles]

Pregnant woman ‘left to die in hospital corridor’ after Qingdao oil pipeline blast

PUBLISHED : Wednesday, 04 December, 2013, 12:02pm
UPDATED : Wednesday, 04 December, 2013, 2:46pm

Angela Meng [email protected]

A man at a hospital that received victims from the explosion at the oil pipeline in Huangdao. Photo: Reuters

A Qingdao man said his pregnant wife died after being left on her own for half an hour in a hospital corridor after the pipeline blast, adding to the disturbing details that have begun to emerge about last month’s incident in the eastern port city.

Chen Na, a 23-year-old Qingdao native, was 7 months and 10 days pregnant on November 22, the day of the deadly oil explosion, the Beijing News reported on Wednesday.

According to the newspaper, Ding Haiwei, who worked at the Yihe Electric Group with Chen, heard the explosion nearby and came out of the office to find his wife lying outside on the ground clutching her stomach. She did not appear to have suffered any external wounds.

Ding rushed her on a Yihe company van to the Huangdao Hospital for Traditional Chinese Medicine, which was swamped with other patients from the blast. Chen was not given emergency treatment and was left alone in the hallway.

Ding said that when he finally found an obstetrician to attend to his wife, foetal monitoring showed the baby was still alive but then the hospital’s electricity went out. The doctor advised them to go to another hospital, Caixin Online reported.

After discovering the company van had left to fetch more injured workers, Chen tried to find another ambulance to transport his wife but drivers of two ambulances refused to help, saying they could only help people from their company, the website said. He then took his wife on a public bus, which could only crawl slowly through heavy traffic following the explosion, to the Medical College of Qingdao University, and she began vomiting blood.

Minutes after finally arriving at the hospital, almost three hours after the explosion, Chen died along with her unborn baby.

Ding told the Beijing News that if his wife had been given adequate emergency treatment, she and the baby may have lived.

“But an emergency physician never came and my wife didn’t get emergency treatment,” he was reported as saying.

The oil pipeline owned by Sinopec leaked on November 22, causing a huge explosion and leaving 62 dead and 136 hospitalised. Seven Sinopec executives have been detained by police but authorities have yet to announce the official cause of the incident. The Administration of Work Safety cited unreasonable layout, negligence and unprofessional handling as reasons for the blast.