Production is expected to resume later this week at Deere & Co.’s facilities in Tianjin, China, almost a week after a massive chemical explosion at a nearby warehouse in the port. That has prompted contamination fears and a major cleanup of a 3-kilometre (1.8-mile) -radius, cordoned-off area in the port city southeast of Beijing. Those apartments’ walls were singed and its windows were shattered, and all residents have been evacuated. “Kids are asking: How can we grow up healthy?” read another banner.
Advertisement
There is outrage from the surrounding neighborhood residents, demanding the Tianjin government provide answers to why the warehouse even existed.
The country’s top prosecuting office has announced that it is setting up a team to investigate possible offences, including dereliction of duty. Xinhua news report that Ruihai Logistics’ manager has been detained by police.
“Twenty seconds later I heard the second explosion and saw the rising mushroom cloud”. However, the high-resolution aerial image (see the full version of it below) of the Tianjin explosion crater truly shows the devastating force of the blast.
“I’m anxious because we don’t know what’s in the rain”, said a taxi driver.
Tianjin Vice Mayor He Shushan promised at a press conference that all risky chemicals in the outer area would be gone by Monday evening. Meanwhile, more than 80 of the victims have been identified and almost 700 people remain hospitalized for injuries they sustained in the accident. “Up until now they have not acknowledged us at all”, said Li Jiao, whose home was close to the blast site.
Sodium cyanide is a toxic chemical that can form a flammable gas upon contact with water, and several hundred tons would be a clear violation of rules cited by state media that the warehouse could store no more than 10 tons at a time. Rain began falling mid-morning, but there was no immediate word of new blasts.
Xinhua notes that 6,000 people have been displaced by the explosion, and the official death toll remains under 150.
Environmental Protection Administration (EPA) officials said that hazardous chemicals released from deadly explosions at the Chinese port of Tianjin would not affect Taiwan, as southwesterly winds would carry any pollution away.
He also said that 3,000 soldiers had been dispatched to the disaster zone to clean up any leaks of hazardous materials.
The public has raised concerns whether firefighters were put into harm’s way in the initial response to the fire and whether the hazardous material – including compounds combustible on contact with water – was properly taken into account in the way the firefighters responded.
Chinese media that have reported different versions of events have been accused of spreading “rumours” that “manufacture panic … resulting in adverse social panic” by the Cyberspace Adminstration, which says, after a shove through some online translate-o-tronic machinery, that 32 web sites have been shut down for a month for their sins.
Advertisement
Industrial accidents are not uncommon in China after three decades of rapid growth. In June 2013, a fire at a poultry plant in the northeastern province of Jilin killed 121 people.
