Health fears after blasts rock port city in China
Smoke billows Thursday from the site of an explosion that reduced a parking lot filled with new cars to charred remains in the Chinese port of Tianjin. The Wednesday blasts at a chemical warehouse killed at least 50 and injured more than 700.
TIANJIN, CHINA • This bustling port city a 90-minute drive from the Chinese capital awoke Thursday to scenes of devastation — huge grey plumes of smoke, vast parking lots of burnt-out vehicles, block after block of high-rises with their windows blown out — and unanswered questions about what caused a pair of enormous explosions whose terrifying fury was broadcast around the world.
As the death toll climbed to 50 from the blasts Wednesday night, rescue workers combed the rubble of the flattened warehouse district for bodies while hundreds of people crowded hospitals. Throughout the day, hundreds more lined up to donate blood in the wilting heat.
The blasts, at a company licensed to store a witches’ brew of hazardous chemicals, injured more than 700 people, 52 of them critically, and produced shock waves felt for kilometres. Many of the injured were hit by flying glass and other debris as thousands of apartment windows blew in, some more than one kilometre from the site of the explosions.
At least 12 of the dead were firefighters who had responded to earlier reports of a blaze at Ruihai International Logistics, a four-year-old company that unloads and stores hazardous cargo in what is the world’s 10th largest container port by volume, the state news media and government officials said.
Thursday, fires at the site continued to produce a steady cloud of smoke after officials, unsure about the nature of the chemicals, decided to let the blazes burn out on their own.
Residents of the Binhai district, frustrated by the lack of reliable information, said they were unsure whether it was safe to breathe the air, and many people continued to wear disposable face masks.
“Right now we don’t know anything,” said Sun Meirong, 52, an office cleaner who trudged down 13 flights of stairs to safety with her one-yearold grandson after the explosions blew in the windows and front door of her apartment.
Ruihai’s website was inaccessible, and calls to the company were met with a busy signal. Also inaccessible was the website for the Tianjin Administration for Industry & Commerce, the agency that collects information about companies, their executives and shareholders. In a social media post, the agency said the blast had forced it to close temporarily.
According to the Tianjin Tanggu Environmental Monitoring Station, the company stored toxic industrial chemicals, including sodium cyan- ide, toluene diisocyanate and calcium carbide. It was also licensed to handle highly combustible substances, such as liquefied natural gas.
In a statement Thursday, Greenpeace warned many of the substances posed worrying threats to human health. It said sodium cyanide, a compound used in mining, is especially toxic, while toluene diisocyanate, used in making polyurethane products, is a known carcinogen and highly explosive.
With rain forecast for Friday, Greenpeace warned about the danger of airborne pollutants seeping into local groundwater. The disclosed dangerous chemicals were stored close to dense residential areas raised questions about the government’s role in monitoring operations at the site.
It appears officials in Tianjin were aware of the risks. In recent weeks, officials with the city’s Administration of Work Safety met several local chemical companies and asked them to ensure the safety of the substances on their premises, citing summer weather that included “extreme heat, high humidity and heavy rain,” according to an Aug. 6 posting on the agency’s website.
During a news conference Thursday, Wen Wurui, a senior environmental official, played down the threat of contaminated air, saying emission readings in the city had dropped to safe levels after the initial blasts.
As the extent of the disaster became apparent, officials moved quickly to control information. Comments on social media criticizing the government were promptly deleted, and for much of the day, the city’s main news channel played South Korean soap operas, prompting ridicule on social media. The Tianjin Internet Police issued a warning that those who spread rumours about the accident would be “severely dealt with according to the law.”
At Taida Hospital, where scores of the injured were taken, grieving relatives assaulted foreign journalists and some residents criticized what they said was an inadequate government response. “There were 2,000 or 3,000 people living in that neighbourhood, and they could have been notified earlier to evacuate,” said Wang Dong, 55, a taxi driver whose head was injured when the door of his apartment blew off its hinges.
Right now we don’t know anything