Time
Rishi Iyengar
August 13, 2015
Rescue operations have been suspended while teams scan the area for harmful chemicals
An environmental expert says evacuation of the area around Wednesday’s mammoth warehouse blast in the Chinese port city of Tianjin is the “main priority,” and warned of the explosion’s long term consequences.
His words came as the death toll continued to rise, with at least 44 people dead and 520 others hospitalized, of which 66 are in critical condition, China’s state-run Xinhua news agency reported Thursday afternoon. Several of the dead are reportedly firefighters.
“With a blast like this, normally you would expect the transport [of particulate matter] to be along the wind gradient or contours, but a blast this big must push it beyond that in the opposite direction,” Ravi Naidu, Director of the Global Centre for Environmental Remediation at the University of Newcastle Australia, told TIME. “Not just people but animals and other organisms would be exposed to certain chemicals.”
Rescue operations have been temporarily suspended while chemical teams scan the area for harmful materials as fears of airborne toxins mount.
“We are concerned that certain chemicals will continue to pose a risk to the residents of Tianjin,” Greenpeace Asia’s Beijing office said to TIME in an emailed statement. “According to the Tianjin Tanggu Environmental Monitoring Station, hazardous chemicals [that may have been at the blast site] include sodium cyanide (NaCN), toluene diisocyanate (TDI) and calcium carbide (CaC2), all of which pose direct threats to human health on contact. NaCN in particular is highly toxic. Ca(C2) and TDI react violently with water and reactive chemicals, with risk of explosion. This will present a challenge for firefighting and, with rain forecast for tomorrow, is a major hazard.”
The city in China’s northeast—located 150 km from the capital Beijing—was rocked by two massive explosions late Wednesday night, with videosreleased soon after the incident showing a massive fireball rising high into the air above a warehouse as well as a person killed by debris when the explosion shattered the glass wall he was approaching.
The blasts took place at around 11.30 p.m. local time at a warehouse belonging to Ruihai International Logistics, a transportation company that, according to its website, is involved in “cargo declaration, cargo transportation and warehouse storage of dangerous cargo.”
What appears to be video shot from a drone camera released Thursday morning showed the charred remains of hundreds of parked cars and several surrounding buildings, completely destroyed by the blasts. TIME was unable to independently verify the video’s original source.
