Nine people got burned in a carbon dioxide gas cylinder explosion at the Dung Quat shipyard in Quang Ngai Province, central Vietnam on Friday afternoon, a local official confirmed on the same day.

Ha Hoang Viet Phuong, head of the Dung Quat Economic Zone and Quang Ngai Industrial Parks Authority, told Tuoi Tre (Youth) newspaper that the Authority had asked Dung Quat Shipbuilding Industry Company (DQS), which operates the shipyard, to report on the incident.

At 1:25 pm on Friday, a fire broke out in a void tank at the bottom of the pump room of a vessel named Legend and left workers who were welding things there burned, the DQS said in a report over the incident.

The DQS blamed the fire on an oil pipeline leaking into the void tank when the workers were welding.

The burned victims are receiving medical treatment. Photo: Manh Truong / Tuoi Tre

A leader of Quang Nam Central General Hospital in neighboring Quang Nam Province told Tuoi Tre that the burned victims were hospitalized there at 2:15 pm on the same day.

After being triaged, four were confirmed to have suffered severe burns to over 30 percent of their body, while the remaining five were burned at lower levels.

The nine were later transferred to Da Nang Hospital in neighboring Da Nang City on Friday evening, where three of them were rushed to the intensive care unit due to burn injuries of 70-80 percent of total body surface area.

Le Duc Nhan, director of Da Nang Hospital, said one of the three severely burned patients had to undergo an operation on Friday night.

The six other patients with less severe burns are receiving medical treatment at the hospital.

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