The emphasis on safety follows two massive explosions at a warehouse storing risky chemicals in Tianjin City of China on August 12, killing at least 114 people.
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A paramilitary policeman wearing a mask gestures to the photographer to stop as he blocks a road leading to the evacuated residential area and explosion site, at Binhai new district in Tianjin, China, on Monday. Officials said environmental standards were still “basically guaranteed” and that there were contingency plans to prevent possible rainfall from creating risky gases or spreading contamination.
This was the focus of residents’ anger as they gathered outside the Mayfair Hotel, where government press conferences have been taking place.
Dark smoke had cleared after the blast but flames could still be seen.As teams specialized in handling hazardous chemicals scrambled to clean up the blast site, Tianjin’s deputy mayor, He Shushan, confirmed there was about 700 tons of the deadly chemical sodium cyanide stored at the warehouse that blew up.
Sodium cyanide, which has a variety of industrial uses including in goldmining, is a toxic white crystal or powder. No unsafe levels were found at 14 inspection sites outside the zone, he said.
The warehouse owner, Ruihai worldwide Logistics, had a licence to handle risky chemicals at the time of the blast, but there were questions about its certificates and it had previously operated without one, the official Xinhua news agency reported.
Military chemical and nuclear experts have been brought in, as has more than 140 staff from the company that produced the chemical.
Officials said on Monday the death toll from the disaster had risen to 114 with 70 people missing, but cautioned that some of those could among the 60 corpses yet to be identified.
A minor explosion occurred on Monday morning at the site. Can’t the government give us an explanation? “No one has noticed us yet. It isn’t a small amount of money for us”, he said.
Locals are now asking why, after a series of lethal blasts, the Chinese government hasn’t done more to protect them, when the horror of previous disasters are so well known.
In a rare impromptu interview on Monday, Chinese premier Li Keqiang told Hong Kong’s i-Cable news that all firefighters who died – contract and professional – should equally recognised.
State prosecutors on Sunday said they had launched an investigation into whether there had been any “abuse of power or dereliction of duty”, Xinhua said.
He ordered the swift release of information about the explosions.
The magnitude of the original blasts was captured by the US Geological Survey which has equipment in Beijing (around 100 miles away), recording the Tianjin blasts at a magnitude of 2 or 3 on the Richter scale.
“Tianjin is not an exceptional case in terms of the inadequate disaster-response work”, said the paper, which has close ties to the ruling Communist Party.
The official and media comments may indicate that authorities will look to hold individuals responsible for the disaster.
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Authorities have been criticised for failing to uphold industrial regulations, notably requirements that warehouses stocking unsafe materials be at least one kilometre from surrounding public buildings and main roads.
