Luo Shuhui's home was 700 meters from the chemical plant that
exploded last week, hurling fireballs into the sky.
Now, Luo and
other nearby residents are livid at the government and want it to pay for their
homes.
"I just
want an answer from the government," Luo said Sunday at a protest by local
apartment owners. "Are the officials corrupt, or what? Why did they build
a hazardous chemical warehouse near our home without telling us? Who would want
to live next to a ticking time bomb? No one!"
It's been four
days since the explosions rocked the northeastern coastal city of Tianjin on
Wednesday, killing at least 112 people, officials said -- with many more bodies
likely trapped in the rubble. At least 95 people are still missing, city
government spokesman Gong Jiansheng said.
Rescuers have
found more than 50 people alive, Gong said. They include a 19-year-old
firefighter who lay on the ground for hours with burns and a cracked skull
until he was found, officials said.
Workers spent
another day scouring heaps of rubble for possible survivors, but one of the
military commanders in the effort said the odds of finding anyone alive Sunday
are slim.
Instead, Maj. Gen. Shi Luze said, he expects the search to yield
more bodies.
The blasts, one
of which had the force of more than 20 tons of TNT, left more than 700 people
injured and thousands homeless, officials said.
Toxic concerns
Residents worried about lingering
contamination.
"I asked my
in-laws to take my daughter home. I don't want them to stay here," migrant
worker Tian Binyan said. "I'm worried. I heard it's going to rain later,
and that would make the air toxic."
Like Luo, Zhang
Yuqin wants the government to buy out her home near the plant. She wears a
surgical mask while outside, as do several other protesters.
"We haven't
been back home since the explosions," Zhang said. "The soldiers
wouldn't let us into the compound. We heard they're cleaning up our homes. We
haven't agreed to it, and don't know why they're cleaning up."
'Lessons paid for with blood'
Chinese President Xi Jinping said
Saturday that the Tianjin blasts and other recent accidents exposed severe
problems in workplace safety.
He urged
authorities to heed "safe growth" and the people's interest first in
efforts to avoid such accidents, the state news agency Xinhua reported.
The president
also "urged authorities to learn from the 'extremely profound' lessons
paid for with blood" in the Tianjin explosions, Xinhua said.
Xi is demanding
improvements to workplace safety, the agency added.
The chemicals in the warehouse
The warehouse was a temporary storage
facility that housed materials after they arrived at the port and before they
were transported elsewhere, said Gao Huaiyou, deputy director of the city's
Work Safety Administration.
The warehouse was destroyed by the explosions, he told
reporters, and managers of the facility have provided "insufficient
information" about what chemicals were stored there.
But sodium
cyanide, a highly toxic chemical that can kill humans rapidly, was one of them,
Gao said.
On Sunday, Shi,
the military commander, offered more details about what was at the site.
"After
on-site inspection, we have found several hundred tons of cyanide material at
two locations," he said.
"If the blasts have ripped the barrels open, we neutralize
it with hydrogen peroxide or other even better methods. If a large quantity is
already mixed with other debris, which may be dangerous, we have built
1-meter-high walls around it to contain the material -- in case of chemical
reactions if it rains. If we find barrels that remain intact, we collect them
and have police transport them to the owners."
The
environmental group Greenpeace, citing a local monitoring station, said it
believed other dangerous chemicals stored at the site included toluene diisocyanate
and calcium carbide.
Gao said further
investigation, including checks of customs records, would be needed to
establish the types and amounts of all the chemicals at the warehouse.
The environmental toll
More than 2,000 troops are searching
areas within a 3-kilometer radius for hazardous material that may have been
blown out by blasts, Shi said.
Wen Wurui,
Tianjin's environment protection chief, said Thursday that some chemical levels
in the area were higher than normal but they would not be dangerous to humans
unless someone were exposed to them for long periods.
By Sunday, toxin
levels at the site had dropped to normal and won't cause any health hazards,
Shi said.
And Bao
Jingling, chief engineer of the Tianjin Environmental Protection Bureau, said
the air and water are safe for residents.
But Greenpeace warned that rain could pose
more challenges by setting off reactions and washing chemicals into the ground.
Searching for a cause
Fire officials said hazardous chemicals
stored at the warehouse were ignited by fire. But the cause of the fire has yet
to be determined.
Executives from
Rui Hai International Logistics Co., the company that owned the warehouse, have
been taken into custody, state media reported Thursday.
The warehouse is in a sparsely populated district about 40
kilometers (25 miles) from the center of Tianjin, a sprawling metropolis of
more than 13 million people.
About 90,000
people live within a 5-kilometer radius of the blast site, the China Earthquake
Networks Center said.
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