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Firefighters respond to the explosion and fire that killed Xiaoyuan Li, a 57-year-old immigrant worker from China, on May 22, at the May Ship Repair shipyard in Mariners Harbor on the North Shore of Staten Island, New York City. [Photo: FDNY]<\/p>\nFirefighters respond to the explosion and fire that killed Xiaoyuan Li, a 57-year-old immigrant worker from China, on May 22, at the May Ship Repair shipyard in Mariners Harbor on the North Shore of Staten Island, New York City. [Photo: FDNY]<\/p>\n
Xiaoyuan Li, a 57-year-old immigrant worker from China, was killed on May 22 when a fire and explosions tore through the May Ship Repair shipyard in Mariners Harbor on the north shore of the New York City borough of Staten Island. More than two dozen New York City Fire Department (FDNY) and Emergency Medical Services personnel were injured, several seriously, when a major secondary explosion occurred while they were conducting search and rescue operations inside the industrial complex. Li was a husband and father who had worked at the yard for approximately four years and lived in Flushing, Queens.<\/p>\n
At approximately 3:30 p.m., emergency dispatchers received calls reporting a fire in the rear section of the yard and workers trapped near the dock. The FDNY did not arrive at a stable, contained scene\u2014firefighters entered an active emergency, conducting searches through confined metal structures and tank and basement areas adjacent to the dry dock. At approximately 4:20 p.m., a major secondary explosion rocked the facility while responders were still inside. <\/p>\n
May Ship Repair operates as a shipyard and dry dock facility, performing marine repair and construction work involving welding, cutting, fuel systems, coatings, buoyancy and ballast tank systems and labor inside enclosed metal structures. According to reporting by the New York Times, a dry dock was under construction at the time of the disaster. The fire began in or near the dock, with the first explosion occurring inside a tank within the wall of the dry dock structure\u2014part of the system used to raise and lower the dock.<\/p>\n
The disaster was the product of inherently unsafe conditions: workers laboring inside enclosed metal tanks, in close proximity to flammable vapors, in an environment where ventilation failures become lethal and where pressure to complete construction and maintenance work collides directly with safe operation. Confined maritime industrial labor\u2014welding inside tanks, maintaining ballast systems, working within the interiors of vessels and dock structures\u2014is among the most hazardous categories of industrial work. When safety procedures are subordinated to production schedules and cost pressures, these environments become killing grounds. That Li and his coworkers were inside such conditions did not represent an aberration: It was a routine working day.<\/p>\n
Xiaoyuan Li was employed not directly by May Ship Repair but as a subcontractor. Subcontracting is aimed at reducing direct labor costs and diffusing responsibility and legal accountability for safety compliance across layers of contractual arrangement. <\/p>\n
The disaster poses several questions: Who supervised entry into the tanks? Who conducted safety inspections? Who bore final responsibility for confined-space procedures? <\/p>\n
These questions have not been answered. Among other things, the subcontracting system is designed to ensure that they cannot easily be answered.<\/p>\n Li had worked at the yard for approximately four years. He immigrated from Yanbian, a Korean Autonomous Prefecture in China that borders North Korea, around 10 years ago for a better life for his family, his 22-year-old son, Jerome Li, told the New York Post. <\/p>\n Li would start his day at 4 a.m., often not arriving home until 5 p.m.\u00a0\u201cHe\u2019s working hard and taking care of the family,\u201d Li told the Post. \u201cHe works so early and it\u2019s hard work at the shipyard. Every day he\u2019s really tired when he gets back home.\u201d<\/p>\n He was finishing his last day of work for May Ship Repair on the dry dock in Mariners Harbor before a planned weekend trip with his wife, Jinhua. \u201cMy mom called me and said that my dad\u2019s coworker called the police and said that my dad is trapped inside of the boat,\u201d the son said. <\/p>\n Immigrant workers have long been condemned to the most dangerous type of work\u2014construction, dock work, shipyards, meatpacking, agriculture, logistics and maintenance. The same political establishment that publicly scapegoats immigrants\u2014conducting raids, deploying the threat of deportation as a tool of labor discipline\u2014relies materially on immigrant workers to perform exactly the dangerous industrial work the capitalist economy demands.<\/p>\n The North Shore of Staten Island is not incidental to this disaster. Mariners Harbor, Port Richmond, Howland Hook\u2014these neighborhoods constitute an industrial corridor embedded within working-class communities, housing the shipyards, towing operations, storage facilities and logistics infrastructure that support the commerce of the New York harbor. Hazardous industry is built in proximity to the workers who operate it, who cannot afford to live elsewhere and whose neighborhoods absorb the environmental and safety consequences. In 1973, an explosion at a Staten Island liquefied natural gas facility killed 40 workers, one of the deadliest industrial disasters in the city\u2019s history.<\/p>\n In the immediate aftermath of last week\u2019s explosion, May Ship Repair\u2019s ownership issued routine statements expressing shock, describing safety as a \u201cfirst priority,\u201d and declaring full cooperation with investigators. Official investigations were promptly announced by the FDNY Fire Marshal, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) and relevant city and state agencies.<\/p>\n![](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/1778579142_29_26b604a0-8a94-44e5-bac8-4cd57b0fab72.png\"\/)
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