Tianjin explosions: Foul tang in air as troops tackle cleanup

The northeastern Chinese port of Tianjin was a city in shock after an explosion like a nuclear blast tore through a high-tech industrial area where dangerous chemicals were stored. It killed 50 people, including at least a dozen firefighters, and shot fireballs into the air.

A foul chemical tang hung in the air and smoke from the site was still visible as darkness fell on this city of nearly 15 million last night, at a point near the Binhai New Area where police had set up a roadblock to stop people entering the devastated site.

Special chemical defence troops joined hundreds of emergency workers taking part in the rescue operation. As well as the 50 confirmed dead, 701 others were admitted to hospitals, rescue headquarters said. Of the injured, 71 were in critical condition.

"The bed was shaking, cars were moving as well, it felt like an earthquake, like a bomb," one young woman surnamed Liu, who lives in Binhai, told The Irish Times.

Twisted wreckage

Windows in apartment buildings were blown out and walls knocked over within a 2km radius of the site, with the twisted wreckage of containers scattered in halls. In one logistics base, hundreds of brand-new VW Beetles were destroyed. Tianjin is the 10th-biggest port in the world, and the route through which many of the raw materials to fuel China’s rapid economic rise enter the country.

Also damaged was the office building which houses the Chinese supercomputer Tianhe-1, one of the world’s fastest supercomputers.

Much of the drama was relived on mobile phones over the afternoon as video posted on China’s WeChat social network showed the horror. In one clip, a man in an apartment building some distance from the scene watched an initial explosion, which was followed by a second, much larger, blast. Shockwaves hit the apartment building seconds later.

The explosions were so huge that they registered as seismic events. According to the China Earthquake Administration's official account on Weibo, the first explosion at 11.34pm on Wednesday registered as a magnitude 2.3 and the second explosion, 30 seconds later, was measured at magnitude 2.9.

According to the official Xinhua news agency, the first explosion was the equivalent to three tonnes of TNT and the second equivalent to 21 tonnes.

Dangerous goods

Firefighters were at the scene fighting a fire before the first explosion, and they appear to have borne the brunt of the casualties. Officials said 1,000 firefighters and more than 140 fire engines were struggling to contain a blaze in a warehouse that contained “dangerous goods”.

The Beijing News reported that there were 700 tonnes of sodium cyanide on the site and that some of this toxic material had leaked into the sewerage system and emergency workers were trying to halt the discharge and remove the leaked substance.

Thoughts are turning to the environmental fallout. After a few days in the pollution in this part of China, it’s hard to tell if they are regular particles in the air or if they are from the explosion. We don facemasks just in case. The authorities say the air is safe, but many people don’t believe it.

Firefighters said that potassium nitrate and sodium nitrate were stored at the location – both materials are used in the manufacture of explosives.

Chinese reporters said that as well as those two materials, there was liquid caustic soda, or sodium hydroxide, and hydrogen iodide, which is used in making metamphetamines, and other materials.

The governor of the district, Zhang Yong, said the cause of the explosion was still unclear, although it has been confirmed there were dangerous chemicals and explosives stored in the area. "I'm not an expert so I'm not sure yet," Zhang told a news conference.

The news conference was shown live on state broadcaster CCTV and the coverage stopped after a journalist asked how close were facilities housing dangerous chemicals to residential areas.

“The press conference was very disappointing, it didn’t reveal any useful information, all government talk about how they would make sure it wouldn’t happen again,” one young Tianjin resident complained.

“It’s so long since it happened, how come they still don’t know type of dangerous chemicals were being stored? And those firemen went in without any kind of proper protection,” the local resident added.

Lu Yun, head of Tiianjin’s Teda Hospital, which admitted about 150 injured people, told Xinhua that most of the injuries were from broken glass or stones, and that some people were seriously injured.

Hundreds of volunteers were arriving at hospitals to give blood, and some taxi drivers and private car owners were offering to help transport the wounded to hospitals.

China is good at dealing with emergencies, having gained experience after the Sichuan earthquake in 2008 and more recently the ferry disaster in Hebei province.

The owner of the warehouse has been identified as Tianjin Dongjiang Port Ruihai International Logistics. The company’s website said it was a government-approved firm specialising in handling “dangerous goods”. There were reports that someone from the company had been detained.

Casualty figures

Many doubt the official casualty figures. One nearby residential area had 5,617 families living in it, according to one local resident, and it was heavily damaged, which would seem to suggest higher casualties.

People on the ground said they had heard from customs officials that the fire could not be put out, as two tanks hadn’t exploded, and the temperature was too high. They were trying to keep people outside a 3km radius.

Tianjin is a bustling metropolis and the Binhai district is an innovation centre in a city which is famously ambitious and forward-looking.

Tianjin is a keen partner in plans to link up with the capital Beijing and the neighbouring province of Hebei to form a megalopolis that will be as big as Uruguay and have a population of 100 million.

When it is finished, the megalopolis – called Jing-Jin-Ji – will cover 216,000sq km and will have a combined gross domestic product of more than six trillion yuan (€840 billion), making it China’s third-largest economic region after the Pearl River and Yangtze River deltas.

Tianjin was granted to the British in the 1858 Treaties of Tientsin, which permitted foreign missionaries to enter the interior, allowed foreign legations in Beijing and opened 11 ports to foreign trade.

President Xi Jinping said there must be a “ full effort to rescue and treat the injured and ensure the safety of people and their property” and said those responsible should be “severely handled”.