Huge blaze breaks out at steel plant in Tokyo

TOKYO — A huge blaze broke out Monday at a steel pipe plant near Tokyo’s Haneda airport, a fire department official said, as television images showed plumes of thick black smoke and flames shooting up into the air. The blaze came just hours after a blast ripped through a warehouse at a US military post near Tokyo, sending sparks into the sky and triggering a blaze that burned through the night, although there were no reports of injuries. Local police declined to speculate on whether there was any link between the two incidents. We do not know any details at this point, a police spokesman told AFP on the question of any connection. The site near the busy international airport is owned by a unit of giant steelmaker Nippon Steel & Sumitomo Metal, which declined to make an immediate comment. The vast steel pipe-making facility, which spans 20,800 square meters (224,000 square feet), operates a pair of manufacturing lines, about one kilometer from Haneda. A fire broke out from a two-meter cooling tower, the fire official said without elaborating. Aerial television footage showed the blaze stretched across a long, narrow warehouse after it was first reported at 11:36 am local time (0236 GMT). It reportedly spread to a next door cosmetics factory owned by Japan’s Kao. Public broadcaster NHK said about 600 of its employees had been evacuated from the site. — AFP