A 63-year-old man was crossing the street in Baotou, a city in the Inner Mongolia region of northern China. He had no way of knowing that at that very moment, several blocks away, a boiler had just exploded inside a bathhouse.
The object, two meters in diameter and more than two meters tall, was propelled through the air with such force that it flew over a six-story building before falling directly onto the pedestrian. He died instantly, crushed in the middle of a public road, according to the state-run Xinhua news agency.
Three other people were injured. A passerby injured a leg while trying to run when he saw “the enormous object flying toward him”, and two workers at a restaurant next to the establishment were injured when a wall collapsed from the shock wave. Chinese authorities are still investigating what caused the boiler to explode.
