[breaking] huge industrial disaster/explosion in Beijings harbor city

[Sasha]

something (chemical/gas/oil plant?) exploded in the main harbor city Tianjin near the Chinese capital of Beijing and by the looks of it leveled the whole harbour district.
the videos i'm seeing online are insane, looks like a nuke going off. even with the chinese censorship in full swing it seems clear there are hundreds if not thousands of people hurt.
obviously first thoughts go out to all the chinese wrokers that got killed or hurt but this is also not going to help the chinese stockmarket and yen that have been crashing again the last days.

[Sasha]

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[Sasha]

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[StromboliFucker666]

Holy shit...

[Sasha]

The China Earthquake Networks Centre said the magnitude of the first explosion was the equivalent of detonating three tons of TNT, while the second was the equivalent of 21 tons of the explosive.

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-china-33896292

[Sasha]

http://image.bjnews.com.cn/2015/08/1090.html#p=0579219F54CE

[willowtooth]

It was caused by a company called Ruihai International Logistics, so far 44 people are dead and over 500 injured.

Final death toll likely to be in the hundreds



State-run digital publication The Paper made a list of the categories of “dangerous goods” stored at Ruihai International Logistics, based on the company’s website:

Argon and compressed natural gas
Flammable liquids such as butanone
Flammable solids and self-combustible goods
Oxidizing agents
Toxic goods, including sodium cyanide
Corrosives, including formic acid

In March 2014, the Tianjin government held an emergency drill (link in Chinese) on highly toxic and hazardous chemicals at Ruihai International Logistics. A government inspection between November and December 2013 reported that five of the more than 4,300 containers on site were improperly encased.

A company representative has been detained by the police, the People’s Daily reported.http://qz.com/478605/pick-your-poison-the-firm-behind-huge-explosions-in-tianjin-handles-all-manner-of-hazardous-chemicals/

[Sasha]

saw daylight pictures on the news just now, seems that the stacks of containers absorbed a lot of the blasts...

[Ceallach_the_Witch]

yeah, i wouldn't be surprised at all if those numbers triple given the damage caused to residential areas close to the blast. A bit of cursory wikipedia browsing shows a few explosions of similar size with pretty appalling death tolls.

[Sasha]

yeah, i wouldn't be surprised at all if those numbers triple given the damage caused to residential areas close to the blast. A bit of cursory wikipedia browsing shows a few explosions of similar size with pretty appalling death tolls.


doesnt have to, in 2000 a 177 ton fireworks explosion leveled a whole neighborhood in the dutch city of enschede in daytime on a saturday and yet only 23 people died... explosions can be weird

[Palmares]

I'm not sure if this is confirmed, but a friend of mine who lives in Tianjin (just outside Beijing) said two of his students (he is a teacher) died. Says there's no official account for the cause of the explosions...

[Sasha]

Says there's no official account for the cause of the explosions...

there are rumors that the initial blast was caused by a fuck up of the fire brigade who tried to put out a relatively small fire in a chemical storage facility with water even though the facility was known to house huge quantities of Calciumcarbide (which forms the explosively flammable Acetylene gas when it becomes wet) which set of a chain reaction of explosions...

[Sasha]

the fires are still burning and there are still explosions. the wind turned and chaos broke out when the authorities informed people through loudspeaker vans that they should where facemasks because of "toxic air", the police evacuated some blocks.