13 August 2015 –
Well, here's one thing for sure – getting woken up by your husband telling you that he can't go to work that day because there was an EXPLOSION overnight at the port near his work is an interesting and bizarre way to start your day. It's one that I hope will never, ever be repeated.
I thought he was joking when he told me that work had been canceled! I mean, really…explosions? Explosions big enough to damage the nearly new Deere facility???
Yep.
Those must have been some mighty powerful explosions! The explosions- which for the record – happened in TEDA (Tianjin Economic Development Area) NOT in Tianjin. The second after Mark burst in our bedroom and quickly rehashing everything he'd heard up to that point we realized that the media was stating the catastrophe happened in Tianjin. Naturally we jumped online and via Facebook and email we assured our family and friends overseas that we were just fine. Our American family members knew about the event before we did!!!! Naturally they were quite worried about us. However, TEDA is over 50km away from us. We were not in any real danger.
We've heard that they still don't know what caused the explosions (or so they say…I'm guessing someone DOES know). However, it does look like it was very likely started with the local firefighters trying to put out a small fire at a warehouse close at the port. Apparently they sprayed water on something that doesn't like water….and the place went BOOM …and then again with an even BIGGER BOOM! The largest explosion was equivalent to 21 tons of TNT. The events were big enough that they registered as earthquakes in Beijing (although I did not feel the earth quaking which is odd as this Alaskan girl has never once slept through an earthquake.). I've heard that the event was also captured on a satellite in space. WOW!
Mark spoke with one of his American co-workers that lives in TEDA- he said his wife was on the phone talking with people in the USA when the explosions rocked their apartment. Apparently some of the windows of their high rise apartment were blown in. I cannot even imagine how terrified she must have felt! Thank goodness she and her family are okay. The companies quickly evacuated all expats living in TEDA and temporarily moved them to Beijing. Some companies whose employees live and and work in Tianjin took extra precautions and moved their expat employees also to Beijing. We opted to stay in Tianjin as we honestly felt we were at a safe(-ish) location.
Mark was able to locate all but one of his team members that lives in TEDA. Turns out one of his employees lives (or lived???) in one of the complexes very close to the blast sight. Other employees tried for several hours to locate her – let me tell you – those were a rocky few hours – but they finally found her. She had bolted from her apartment after the first explosion and left behind everything - including her mobile phone. Did you just hear that HUGE sigh of relief? Wow, those were some tense, dark-thought-provoking few hours. Let's not repeat that, okay????
They're still trying to piece things together but it looks like many things were stacked against them…and the worst part of all is that many firefighters lost their lives trying to do the right thing.
Other things that came to light as the dust settled and the fires were put out by a team of hazardous chemical remediation experts from the Chinese military: tons of hazardous chemicals were illegally kept at the warehouse…including 700 tons of sodium cyanide (!!!), potassium nitrate, ammonium nitrate, and calcium carbide. The chemicals were not properly labeled so the firefighters didn't even have a chance to know how to fight a chemical fire. The hazardous chemical storage facility was also within 600m of a residential area. The minimum legal distance is 1km. (Personally, I don't think 1km is far enough away!!!) It seems like lots of laws were either broken or disregarded and now the people in TEDA are unjustly paying the price for those actions.
Timing was interesting for us – as we had already been planning on driving to Beijing on Thursday night and going to the USA Embassy on Friday morning since the girls need new passports within this coming year. And then after finishing up at the embassy we were going to meet up with a big group of our Chinese friends traveling north to the grasslands in Hebei Province for the weekend. Timing was perfect for them – many of our friends live in TEDA and really wanted to get out until they felt it was safe to return (especially since so many of them have young children). We had a fun weekend (more on that in another post!) while Mark was getting updates on the current status of the Deere facility. It was on Sunday they learned that the while the building would be closed until Thursday, the employees were expected to either work from home or take vacation days.
Well, if you're going to work from home you'll need your laptops, right?
While the facility was closed on Monday for repairs – Mark needed to go pick up laptops for employees living in Tianjin who had left them behind locked in their desks at work. I tagged along as I was quite curious to see what TEDA looked like first hand.
Oh boy.
Most of the campus escaped serious damage…except for one building. One building, unfortunately, did not escape damage. Many of its windows and doors were blown out. When we drove up to this building we saw gaping holes in the side of the building where the windows had been knocked out. There was shattered glass on the ground below. I didn't get to see the worst as we only went up to the second floor of that building (floors above the second floor sustained more damage) and many repairs had already been accomplished over the weekend (they quickly replaced damaged ceiling tiles). You could tell that they trying to do the repairs fast as rain was scheduled in the forecast for the following day. Luckily, Mark's building and the factory itself sustained very little damage (thank goodness!). While I'm no structural engineering expert it is my opinion that the facility did not suffer any structural damage. I did not feel unsafe being inside the building. [I did take photos of a little bit of the damage but I need to get permission to post them.]
As we were driving back to Tianjin we noticed other buildings that had their windows blown out – but interesting enough, it did not appear to be uniform. I would love to see a CG representation of the shock wave that knocked out those windows (and knocked people down!). It must have been one hell of an explosion! I should also tell you that we did NOT drive through the exclusion zone (the blast location). I think we were approximately 4km away from ground zero. I'm sure if we had driven into the exclusion zone we might have also witnessed the countless numbers of brand-new cars waiting for shipment that were turned to ashes and dust or seen the large shipping containers tossed around like a bunch of scattered Lego blocks. Yikes!
We've since read that some of the sodium cyanide leaked out – causing a wee bit of panic for the folks living in TEDA. More testing …both the Chinese government and private companies…and the results make it sound that TEDA is safe. They even had caged bunnies and chickens at the blast location that survived being there. That's one way to test to see if the land is habitable. ??? (or at least not deadly poisonous!) With the media going completely bonkers on this event and blowing things waaaaaay out or proportion it is difficult to divine fact from fiction. Am I the only one who is deeply disturbed by the media outlets whose goal in life is to sell fear and sensationalism??? Yes, it was a terrible event but that doesn't give you the right to turn this into some freak show where you can spout out fear. Just the facts, please!!!
While I know this is a tragic event for many families living in TEDA, I am grateful that the event happened late at night. I don't even want to think about how the numbers of casualties and seriously injured could have been several orders of magnitude higher if the events had happened during normal working hours. Our family's story might have turned out quite different. (and not for the better!) The Chinese government has stated that it will help the citizens that were affected by the blast- those that lost their homes and those that lost loved ones. It'll be interesting to see what will happen as a result.
To find out more information, please Google the "12 August 2015 Tianjin port explosions". Also check out YouTube for videos from the event.
Again with "timing"…factories have been asked to reduce their production by a third or do any activities that would cause air pollution (which means that Mark can't do the dirt-moving tests on his machines) for an upcoming BRAND-NEW Chinese holiday which has been titled something like this: "Celebrating the Chinese defeat of Japan. Oh wait, why are we celebrating this???"…so what is this holiday really about??? Beijing is nearly shut down to get ready for some massive parade coming up at the beginning of September. I just want to be sure I'm far, far away all of that!!!!