• After 15+ years, we've made a big change: Android Forums is now Early Bird Club. Learn more here.

Horrifying images and video from Tianjin

rootabaga

rootabaga

Android Expert
I am aghast at the devastation from the explosions in the port apparently made worse by the arriving firefighters spraying water on chemicals that generated acetylene gas. This compilation video from a distance away at 14 seconds really gives one a sense of the size of the biggest blast, which registered 2.3 on the Richter scale and was estimated at 21 tons of TNT. Unimaginable. Luckily it happened at night or the dead would likely be in the many thousands. Still it is an awful tragedy.

The aftermath of the area looks like an atomic bomb went off. Widespread devastation, rows of thousands of new cars torched, incomprehensible.

 
Last edited:
"The blasts, one of which was the equivalent of more than 20 tons of TNT exploding, left at least 56 dead, 700 injured and thousands homeless, officials say."

Can anyone belive that?
 
No, I meant that the total number killed has to be a hell of a lot more than that, with 20 tons of TNT going off in a clearly inhabited area.
 
Can anyone belive that?
Click to expand...

Early reports suggest that this could be one of the worst explosive disasters on record. Port city explosions have the potential to inflict enormous devastation on nearby populations — the Halifax explosion of 1917 killed 2000 and injured an estimated 9000 people, while the Texas City disaster in 1947 killed 581 and injured roughly 5000.
 
According to one report I just saw the government has officially said that at least 105 were killed, up from the earlier adjustment to 85.

Evidently the transient is still in progress, firefighters are doing what they can under adverse conditions, and I personally doubt we'll have a chance to know the full extent until things are under control.

Aside from the immediate casualties, we have no idea what the aftermath will entail from injured survivors or new victims from the chemical clouds.

This is more than a big explosion by all accounts - much more. :(
 
As I mentioned earlier, the transient isn't over, and there are more explosions.

This report says authorities state they're going to use a hydrogen peroxide solution to neutralise the sodium cyanide -

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2015-08-...st-site-evacuated-over-chemical-fears/6700008

You may think of hydrogen peroxide as that stuff in a brown bottle in the bathroom.

I know it as rocket fuel.

http://www.peroxidepropulsion.com/article/5



I hope they get it right.

Because the common byproduct of the wrong reaction is oxygen. Simple, pure oxygen.
 
rootabaga said:
This whole thing is a gargantuan mess. The footage that comes out of there is simply shocking in scale. It's amazing it didn't happen during the day; if it had, the death toll would be incredible. As it is, residence buildings are too close, but they were far enough that though singed and windows blown out, apparently none of the deaths were in those structures.

I read an article this morning that the government has already erected retention walls to prevent chemicals, etc. from polluting the sea.

Yeah, right. It's been what, five days with everything else going on and they have managed to do that already? Hardly.

My guess is that the government will cover this up as best they can, and prosecute a few businessmen who may or may not have been knowledgeable or complicit in what led to this destruction, and life will go on in China much as it has in the past.
Click to expand...

That is so true, yeh and a few people will be thrown in jail... etc. But then United States and everyone else wants its manufacturing and everything else done on the cheap.

China Inc. :rolleyes::eek: ...it mght be a communist country, but laissez-faire capitalism rules.
 
Last edited:
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom