Explosion at a factory in China 08/12. Explosions in China - version and analysis
Two huge explosions that led to a large number of casualties, hundreds of destroyed houses, thousands of destroyed cars are the results of safety violations during the storage of explosives in a Chinese port.
Explosions in the port of Tianjin on August 12, 2015
An object: Ruihai Logistics warehouses, seaport of Tianjin, China. The company was engaged in the transportation and storage of toxic and hazardous substances.
Victims: As a result of the disaster, 160 people died (including 96 firefighters and 11 police officers), 13 people were still missing a month later, and over 400 people were hospitalized.
Causes: The causes of the disaster are being clarified and an investigation is underway. The most likely cause of fires and explosions is a violation of safety regulations and rules for storing hazardous substances.
Chronicle of events
The first reports of a fire in the port came in 22:50 local time (15:50 Moscow time). Fire crews began to arrive at the scene of the fire, but the spread of the fire could not be stopped.
IN 23:36 The first explosion thundered, and 30 seconds later the second. The explosions caused serious damage and increased the fire area. More and more teams of firefighters and rescuers arrived to fight the fire. In total, over 1,000 people took part in extinguishing the fire.
IN 14:30 hours August 13 Firefighting was suspended (the main sources were suppressed), as it was necessary to accurately establish the location and amount of chemicals.
In the following days ( August 15, 16, 21) new explosions occurred in warehouses and new fires appeared, but they were quickly eliminated. Probably, burning cars and containers exploded.
Soon after the disaster, rumors began to spread throughout the city about contamination with sodium cyanide, 700 tons of which were stored in the ill-fated warehouses. These rumors were confirmed, and August 14 authorities announced the evacuation of residents from a three-kilometer zone around the epicenter, and contaminated areas began to be treated with hydrogen peroxide. TO August 17 the hazardous substance has been decontaminated.
All these days and to this day, emergency restoration work has been carried out.
Consequences of the disaster
The explosions had greater power: the first was equivalent to 3 tons of TNT, the second - 21 tons. They caused seismic shocks of magnitude 2.3 and 2.9. Flashes from explosions were visible from space. However, thanks to the work of rescuers, favorable meteorological conditions and simply a happy coincidence of circumstances, the disaster had by no means catastrophic consequences.
The buildings of the warehouse complex were destroyed, dozens of houses were damaged, and windows in buildings at a distance of up to 2 km were broken by the shock wave. Fortunately, none of the residential buildings were completely destroyed, but they and the people living in them suffered from shrapnel, pieces of reinforcement (according to eyewitnesses, they pierced right through the houses) and other debris thrown away by the blast wave. Communications, road surfaces, parked cars, etc. were severely damaged. Explosions and fires destroyed 10,000 new cars stored in warehouses.
Due to the disaster, the port's operations were partially stopped. This seriously hit the city's economy and China's entire transport industry (the port is the fourth largest in the world).
The blast wave damaged the building of the supercomputer center, which houses one of the most powerful supercomputers in the world, Tianhe-1A. The computer itself was not damaged, but experts decided to temporarily shut it down. Already on August 17, it was put back into operation.
Finally, as a result of the disaster, the environment was polluted with toxic substances, including sodium cyanide. But the toxins did not enter the sea, and thanks to the coordinated and quick work of the rescuers, serious contamination of the soil was prevented.
current position
Currently, rescue and emergency restoration work is being carried out at the site of the disaster, issues regarding housing and property of the affected people and organizations are being resolved.
Great efforts are being made to investigate the causes of the disaster; on August 27, 12 people (including the management of Ruihai Logistics) who may be involved in the tragedy were taken into custody. Also, charges were brought against 11 officials who allowed the construction of residential buildings dangerously close to a chemical warehouse.
Video footage of powerful explosions in the city of Tianjin on August 12, 2015 shows how one of the eyewitnesses was hit by a shock wave.
A dramatic video from Chinese Tianjin has appeared on the Internet, where dozens of people were killed as a result of a series of destructive explosions, NTV reports.
The video footage shows how a man was filming from a window a night fire that broke out in warehouses. Then a powerful explosion breaks out in the place where the flames are raging. It can be considered in intkbbee every detail, since the shooting is carried out at close range. The room is filled with a red glow, a man screams in horror, and a child's cry is heard off-screen.
A few seconds later, another explosion is visible, the shock wave from which immediately reaches the home and breaks the windows.
The commentary on the video says that the man was cut by glass shards, but the child, fortunately, was not injured.
A video filmed by an internal surveillance camera in one of the buildings at the epicenter of the explosion was also posted online. It shows how a man standing near the glass doors was blown away by a blast wave in just a fraction of a second, reports TK Zvezda.
The Chinese called the tragedy in Tianjin an atomic bomb explosion
Local residents compare what happened to an earthquake and even an atomic bomb explosion. Liu Yue, a 25-year-old Tianjin resident, told CNN that she immediately felt the first explosion, but it was not as powerful as the second one.
“The second explosion was so strong that I felt our entire 16-story building shake,” said Liu, who lives 4 kilometers from the site of the tragedy. “I thought it was an earthquake, I was extremely scared. I was afraid, that my whole family is in danger."
"It felt like an atomic bomb," truck driver Zhao Zencheng told The Associated Press. "I never thought I would see something like this." The man said he never returned home and spent the night in the cab of the truck.
“The Russian Ministry of Emergency Situations is ready to immediately send modern aviation equipment to the emergency site, including Il-76 and Be-200 aircraft with equipment for extinguishing fires, as well as specialists and rescuers with the necessary equipment and equipment to carry out work in the collapse zone,” the telegram says minister.
Addressing the Chinese minister, the head of the Ministry of Emergency Situations emphasized that Russia’s “emergency” service is ready to provide any necessary assistance and support.
Let us recall a series of explosions in the Chinese industrial metropolis of Tianjin on the night of August 13. The cause of the emergency was a fire at the logistics warehouse of the Ruihai company, where flammable and toxic substances were stored. According to the latest data, 50 people were killed and more than 700 were injured, many of them in serious condition. Dozens more people are still missing.
The first two explosions, which occurred late Wednesday, were recorded as earthquakes measuring 3.0 on the Richter scale. According to images from space, the area within a radius of three kilometers from the epicenter is scorched, as if from napalm; Chinese bloggers generally compare the picture with a nuclear bombing.
The disaster in Tianjin is a “little Chernobyl”
Explosions continued to occur on both Saturday and Sunday. And no one explains what is happening. Losses amount to billions of yuan. For example, more than 5 thousand new cars were burned in a parking lot located near the warehouses. A residential neighborhood located 800 meters from the port was completely destroyed.
“I don’t know what’s exploding there,” he told Pravda.Ru Viktor Ivanov, President of the Russian Union of Chemists. — There are three compounds present: sodium cyanide, potassium cyanide and ammonium cyanide. They are all used in the chemical industry to produce plastics and in metallurgy to extract silver and diamonds, meaning they are widely used materials.
These are dangerous substances, but they themselves should not explode like that. Explosives were probably stored there as well. They don't say anything about them yet. If you mix three or four chemical products, sometimes you don't know what will come out of it. Anything can happen."
According to official data as of Monday, August 17, the death toll from the explosions has increased to 114 people, about 70 are missing. According to AFP estimates, about 400 residents of the Chinese city came out to the city hall on Sunday to demand information about missing relatives, provide housing for those left homeless and information about the consequences of the contamination of the area.
Such “spontaneous protests” are very rare in China, where all such actions take place in an organized manner. But this time the police are not dispersing the demonstrators, AFP notes.
“The situation is very difficult,” the Global Times portal quotes Chinese Premier Li Keqiang. “Tianjin is not an exceptional case in terms of shortcomings in disaster management.”
Another Chinese resource, China Daily, notes that “many questions remain unanswered.” Namely, why were new residential neighborhoods located so close to chemical warehouses? Why did their residents not know about the presence of such a threat?
Why did the logistics company, the owner of the warehouses where the explosion occurred, many times exceed the volume of the dangerous substance sodium cyanide allowed for storage? A quarter of a teaspoon is deadly for humans; in the presence of water, it can turn into hydrocyanic acid, which is even more dangerous, experts say.
There are no answers to these questions yet, which gives rise to various “conspiracy theories,” the newspaper claims. The Chinese website Binhai explains that the renovated warehouses of Rui Hai International Logistics were put into operation in April last year, almost six months after the start of sales of apartments in the residential complex. They were used for handling chemicals.
The limit on cyanide was 10 tons, but in reality 700 tons were stored, and in dangerous proximity to strong oxidizing agents such as potassium nitrate, calcium carbide and sulfur. According to experts interviewed by the site, the substances were stored extremely carelessly, including in the open air, which is generally unacceptable.
The main problem is that China's chemical production has been growing steadily over the past years, as have imports, as China enters into many futures contracts. But their consumption is falling sharply, leading to a sharp increase in inventories. They are stored in violation of safety regulations, explains the reason for exceeding storage limits on the China Chemical Industry News website.
There is also an accusation of nepotism in the case. Bloggers discovered that the son of the former Tianjin port police chief was the main shareholder in the Rui Hai company. Accusations of corruption are not uncommon in China. A memorable case was the death of 5 thousand schoolchildren in the 2008 earthquake in the southwestern province of Sichuan, they were crushed to death due to the collapse of poor-quality floors and slabs. The matter was hushed up.
“Tianjin is one of the largest metropolises in China under central control,” Pavel Kamennov, leading researcher at the Institute of Far Eastern Studies of the Russian Academy of Sciences, deputy head of the Center for Economic and Social Research of China, candidate of political sciences, told Pravda.ru. “There are no precise indications that this is maybe a terrorist attack or something like that - no.
I think that this is still an industrial disaster, the result of neglecting the safety rules for storing these dangerous substances, due to the desire to save money. I think the consequences could be larger, there should be more victims."
“The Chinese have problems with environmental consciousness,” he told Pravde.Ru Mikhail Karpov, Associate Professor, School of Oriental Studies, Faculty of World Economy and International Politics, HSE. “The Chinese received a contaminated area within a radius of three kilometers, huge destruction.
This is such a small Chernobyl, small, small, but Chernobyl. The evacuation did not begin immediately; apparently, the authorities themselves did not fully understand what had happened there. I think that the scale may be greater than is currently stated, because information is blocked.
China is a very highly corrupt country. This is neither good nor bad, it is normal for such a totalitarian regime. What is prescribed for some does not apply to others if he has connections in government agencies.”
In English, read this article at
Over the past year, strange explosions have been occurring all over the world, and their strangeness lies in their power. The only thing they are inferior to is nuclear explosions. Afghanistan, Syria, Yemen, and now China. Someone is testing a new type of destructive weapon comparable in power to nuclear weapons, but with some differences. First of all, this is the undoubted compactness of such a charge and the absence of EMP and radioactive contamination inherent in conventional nuclear explosions. The explosion in Tianjin is essentially 9/11 for China and it will have a great impact on all subsequent events not only in China, but throughout the world. On August 12, an explosion occurred in the Binhai New District of the Chinese city of Tianjin, as a result of which a column of fire rose to a height of several hundred meters and was visible even from space. Authorities say chemicals stored at the port exploded. They are reported to have caught fire and exploded. The warehouse where the explosions occurred belongs to Ruihai Logistics, which specializes in transporting toxic chemicals, particularly compressed gas, flammable liquids and toxic substances. The first explosion occurred at 23:30 local time (4:30 Moscow time) on Wednesday, a few seconds later a second, more powerful one, followed by a series of smaller explosions. The effects of the explosions were felt over a radius of several kilometers and were recorded as seismic activity by the monitoring department of the US Geological Survey in Beijing. As reported by the China Seismological Center, the power of the first explosion was three tons of TNT, and the second - 21 tons. As of August 30, the death toll from explosions in Tianjin, China reached 150 people, with another 23 still missing. At the moment, the most dangerous of the substances already discovered is sodium cyanide due to its extremely high toxicity.
A few days after the explosion, aerial photographs emerged showing the incredible extent of the destruction. A smoking black crater, surrounded by lifeless ruins. The entire surrounding landscape looks charred and flat. Rows of burnt out cars and crumpled containers stretch into the distance in all directions. Windows were broken in houses within a 2-kilometer radius, office buildings were destroyed and hundreds of cars were burned. Tianjin is located 96 km southeast of Beijing. This is a large port-industrial city with a population of 15 million people.
All this is very similar to the use of tactical nuclear weapons, an entirely new type. Similar strange explosions have already occurred recently around the world. It is worth noting that the explosions of the towers on September 11 in the United States still raise many questions and this event could be the first test of such a new generation of mini-thermonuclear weapons. Let us pay attention to the recent powerful explosion in Yemen. The fact that tactical nuclear weapons were used in Yemen is indicated by the presence of scintillation pixels - white dots that flash and disappear in the video during the explosion. The camera's CCD image sensor is exposed to radiation, causing pixel overload and causing white flashes. The interesting thing is that this new type of powerful weapon does not generate EMP (electromagnetic pulse) and does not emit radiation. Otherwise, all the electronics near the epicenter would simply burn out and no one would take any pictures on mobile phones. The video of the explosion in Tianjin shows a huge white-hot fireball, and its size, scale of destruction and other factors indicate the unusual nature of this explosion. Scintillation pixels are not visible on video from mobile phones, but it is worth considering that they are not sensitive to distant radiation. CCD cameras of mobile phones in Tianjin were too far from the explosion site to record this anomaly.
But the brightness of the flash during the explosion was so great that it overloaded the CCD chips and caused a flare effect. The fireball was very white, which means its temperature was more than 4000 C. This could only happen during a thermonuclear explosion.
Another important detail is revealed when examining the cars destroyed by the explosion. The clue to a nuclear explosion is found in the ashes and exploding car radiators. They indicate the type of radiation and explosion best. Everything melted - tires, glass and aluminum, but the steel body of the cars did not melt. Temperature 1500C for melting aluminum and 3000C for melting steel. All organic ash is formed at temperatures below 450C. The explosion generated a plasma fireball that had a temperature of over 4000C! Only nuclear weapons can achieve such values.
1. The fuel tanks did not explode. 2. The tires turned to ash, but did not burn, but rather turned into white dust, which is clearly visible in the photographs. 3. The radiators exploded; they simply aren’t on the cars. 4. Car windows are incinerated or melted, and not knocked out by the shock wave. 5. All cars were exposed to very high temperatures. 6. Tires incinerate at temperatures above 500C. Glass at temperatures from 1500C. Gasoline explodes at a temperature of 250C. The tires turned to ash, but the gas tanks did not explode.
The damage to the vehicles was caused by neutron radiation, and not by conventional explosives. The distance from the epicenter is too great for a normal explosion to melt glass and tires. The tanks did not explode.
The radiator of this car is completely destroyed, turned to ash. Only the top steel plate remained intact, all the aluminum and copper of the radiator were reduced to a pile of ash. All radiators exploded due to the conversion of freon into deuterium fluoride and phosgene. Now we know what caused the engine to catch fire, look at the melted hood and how the excess pressure from the explosion compressed the hoods of the cars. A car radiator coated with copper and aluminum is transparent to nuclear radiation. It acts as a dark body with a hollow plunger - a neutron reflector and a function exactly like the Teller-Ullman hydrogen bomb. If you fill a vacuum chamber, such as a car radiator, with deuterium or freon, you reduce its density and it will take less energy to rupture or melt it when it is attacked by neutrons, gamma rays or x-rays from a nuclear explosion. In the event that the explosion is powerful enough or it was close enough. This indicates a mini nuclear explosive device, with a temperature high enough to melt anything within its range. The key is the lower density of the gas, making the compression of the device much less. This explains why all the melted car radiators caught fire. It also explains the lack of radioactive fallout.
The radiator at the front of the car caught fire, but the rear of the car remained untouched.
The pattern of destruction around the crater proves that it was a shallow underground explosion. If this were a deep underground explosion, the soil would not allow a small nuclear bomb to create a blinding flash.
The explosion that caused this level of destruction was far beyond a simple chemical explosion. In addition, there were no storage facilities at the point of explosion, only a few shipping containers. If the explosion had occurred on the surface, then all the energy would have gone up and the explosion would not have created such a large and deep crater. If you look at the right side of the funnel, you will see cracks. They are caused by the earth being compressed sideways rather than downwards. Such cracks could only occur in the event of an underground explosion with an epicenter at a shallow depth. After the explosion, the earth sank back towards the center, which created these cracks.
A similar explosion crater could appear if the bomb was located several meters underground. It was not a chemical explosion. The building seen at the top right of the frame is a typical example of what remains after a nuclear test; concrete buildings are rarely destroyed below ground level, but they become as if gutted by nuclear explosions.
So we have established that a nuclear explosion did occur, let's now take a closer look at the nature of this explosion. One important question is the method of delivery - was it a cruise missile strike or was it a bomb hidden inside a shipping container? The crater strongly suggests that the explosion was subsurface, which rules out the bomb being delivered to Tianjin in a shipping container. The parameters of the crater do not exclude a cruise missile strike. The soil in this area is very soft, formed from deposits of soft silt and clay deposited by the nearby river. A cruise missile hitting such soft ground at 500mph would certainly penetrate deep enough to cause an underground explosion. On the day of the explosion, it was raining there and most of the ash that covered the surrounding area went into the sea, which led to a massive death of fish in the bay. The safety zone was set at 3 kilometers. This is the correct value in terms of fallout range for a small tactical nuclear bomb. 1 km goes to one CT. The question remains: what kind of weapon was it? Is it uranium-based or plutonium-based, or is it a mixed weapon? Uranium cannot be detected very well, but plutonium-based weapons can be traced back to the reactor that produced them. In photographs, firefighters can be seen measuring radiation levels and using toxic gas detectors. Considering that the evacuation zone was 3 km, we can assume that the power of the explosion was about 3 kilotons. A cruise missile with a nuclear warhead containing 6 kilograms of plutonium. Using the rule of thumb that 1 kiloton yield yields 1 kilogram of plutonium, the size of the explosion matches the effects of a cruise missile warhead explosion. By the way, the reaction caused by a stable glow in the sky is well known as an indicator of a nuclear explosion. Non-nuclear weapons do not provide a sustained "sun-like" glow because they do not have enough energy to ignite the oxygen and nitrogen in the atmosphere.
Another aspect is the readings of seismological equipment. The first explosion had a magnitude of 2.3 on the Richter scale, and the second - 2.9. Eyewitnesses say they felt an earthquake. And this is important, since seismographs record tremors, but not explosions in the air above the surface of the earth. For example, seismographs rarely accurately show explosions in quarries because most of the energy is dissipated upward rather than downward. And the explosions in Tianjin were registered precisely as a seismographic event. That is, as much energy was released as during a small earthquake. It can be reasonably concluded that, unlike a surface explosion of chemicals, the kinetic energy of the explosion at a shallow depth caused powerful shaking of the soil.
As a result, it can be assumed that it was not an explosion of chemicals, but a nuclear explosion of a weapon of an unknown type, used by an unknown country for unknown purposes, writes Veteranstoday.com (a website for veterans of American intelligence, army and special services).
It thundered throughout China on August 12 and turned out to be catastrophic. Authorities admitted that hundreds of tons of sodium cyanide, a dangerous chemical, were stored in a warehouse at a chemical plant in Tianjin.
Even the air in the affected area is poisonous. An urgent evacuation is being carried out within a radius of three kilometers from the plant. Meteorologists monitor the direction and strength of the wind, and most importantly, precipitation. Sodium cyanide is easily soluble in water, and therefore heavy rains in the area can lead to the uncontrolled spread of toxic substances. Chemical defense troops were sent to the disaster zone to urgently localize the source of infection.
The number of victims of the explosion is already and rescuers are finding more and more bodies. Another 95 are still missing. More than 700 people are in hospitals, dozens in critical or serious condition. Among them are many rescuers and firefighters. The people who were the first to come to the aid of the victims did not know that they were working in a contaminated area.
Xiu Wenpu leads to his apartment on the 17th floor - he goes up on foot: there is no electricity or gas in the affected houses. They only let you pick up your things and run back. Inside there is a carpet of fragments, not a single surviving window. If the glass withstood the blow, then the frame did not.
“I had already gone to bed when I saw that everything was lit up. And there was a wild roar. I ran to the window, and a second, terrible explosion thundered,” recalls Xu Wenpu. “I was knocked off my feet, I fell, everyone screamed in the corridor, I ran out along with everyone else to the street."
Just yesterday, new, but now high-rise buildings look like they’ve been shot through - a kilometer from the epicenter. Glass is still falling from above, and torn out double-glazed windows are hanging over. The whole yard is torn up, as if after a bombing. The flying fragments of reinforcement ripped up the asphalt. The shell fragments crashed into parked cars.
The reality of this picture seems simply impossible to believe. The first blow and the fiery glow. Many thought that a gas station had flown into the air or that gas had exploded. Half a minute later there was another flash. But the power is already such that windows, fences, doors fly into dust.
The impacts were even recorded by the seismic service. The second explosion was as powerful as if 20 tons of TNT had detonated. 1,000 firefighters from Tianjin and Beijing fought the fire for several days. Among them are many dead and dozens missing. Firefighters arrived at the scene 40 minutes before the tragedy to extinguish the containers that caught fire. Rumors spread online that the chemicals reacted with water and released an explosive gas. The authorities came to the defense of the firefighters, saying that they would not have done such a stupid thing because they knew what they were dealing with. But they didn't seem to know where exactly the chemicals were stored.
The first apocalyptic footage of a flight over the burnt-out terminal appeared in the morning - ashes, thousands of burnt cars, frames of buildings. And a gaping hole in the center.
Now they are delivering water, food and blankets to those who have nowhere to return. The fastest way to disassemble protective equipment is. After all, it is not clear what people inhaled in the first hours. Military personnel from the chemical defense forces found out that part of the burnt terminal was contaminated with cyanide.
"We sent a team of professionals to the site to spray hydrogen peroxide to help neutralize the cyanide and minimize toxicity," said Gao Huaiyu, head of the Tianjin City Safety Supervision Department.
What other toxic substances the Ruihai company stored in containers and whether they could poison the air and soil is not clear. Customs declarations and owner documents about the cargo do not agree.
Journalists with cameras are not allowed near the explosion site. In the distance there is a cordon and clouds of black smoke rise again.
Katya and Roman have not been able to approach their house for three days - it is inside the quarantine zone. The bedroom windows overlook the cargo terminal, but they were lucky - at half past twelve at night, when the house was shaking, they were in the next room.
They are their own area. It was a typical new China - a zone of advanced development, offices of leading companies. Here is the computer center where the Milky Way supercomputer is located - it was turned off due to the explosion. The port of Tianjin, the fourth largest in the world, is suffering millions of losses - the loading and unloading of containers has been partially stopped.
On Saturday, when the fire finally seemed to be under control, new explosions were heard throughout the terminal. 7-8 strong bangs, new cars caught fire again, or rather what was left of them. All residents and the rescue operation headquarters were evacuated outside the three-kilometer zone. The air is filled with poisonous substances.
