Angry Chinese ask: Why did so many firefighters die in Tianjin explosion?

[webfact]

Angry Chinese ask: Why did so many firefighters die in Tianjin explosion?
By Emily Rauhala
The Washington Post

BEIJING — Last Wednesday night, 25 members of the fifth company of the Tianjin Port Group fire department rushed to the site of an explosion.

They were mostly young men, some just new-in-town teenagers. Eleven hailed from the same county in Hebei province, at least two from the same small town.

None made it out.

Now, almost a week after the massive, chemical-fueled blasts that left more than 100 dead and dozens missing, the fate of these young contract firefighters has become a focal point in a story that has gripped China and sent authorities scrambling to stay ahead of mounting public rage.

Chinese officials have yet to say conclusively what caused the blasts but have acknowledged that there were dozens of types of chemicals on site, including a reported 700 tons of sodium cyanide, 800 tons of ammonium nitrate and 500 tons of potassium nitrate.

Full story: https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/asia_pacific/angry-chinese-ask-why-did-so-many-firefighters-die-in-tianjin-explosion/2015/08/18/4b14b669-de26-4b47-aa57-b2ea844de25b_story.html

-- The Washington Post 2015-08-19

[elgordo38]

The same could be said for 9/11. First to arrive last to leave.

[Publicus]

The people of the CCP China have no clue that their local and state governments have such poorly staffed fire services, inadequate equipment, few competent fire battalion commanders, firefighters who have almost no training in fire science, a constant turnover of personnel due to low pay, no special skills. In short, there are almost no professional or career firefighters or departments in the CCP China.

Instead, each province has a Fire Brigade with county detachments drawn from the People's Armed Police under the command of the Ministry of Public Security. The CCP 'firefighters' are in fact paramilitary police assigned to provincial fire brigade duty for two years only. They have little or no clue of what they are supposed to be doing.

In all of the CCP China there are 30 Provincial Fire Brigades consisting of 159 county detachments. These are supplemented by contract firefighters that provide numbers only as none are trained or professionalized in firefighting or fire science. Pay of contract firefighters is so low and infrequent that turnover is high.

From an editorial in the English language China Daily of Augustt 15th....

Professionalize fire department

But in China, most of the firefighters are active soldiers posted in the fire department for two years, and those on the frontline of firefighting are mostly youths with little experience. Besides, if soldiers who gain good experience in firefighting fail to get promoted as a sergeant within those two years, they are demobilized, leaving only a low percentage of capable firefighters.

Although firefighters have been recruited from among civilians at local levels in recent years to fulfill the required numbers, poor salaries and lack of promotion opportunities force many of them to look for better-paying jobs.

In a world where fire hazards have increased manyfold, no country can do without a professionally trained, well-equipped firefighting force. Perhaps we could learn a thing or two from advanced countries about how to build a professional fire department in order to improve efficiency and reduce casualties.

http://africa.chinadaily.com.cn/opinion/2015-08/15/content_21606935.htm

[JDGRUEN]

The TV World news reports I heard when the incident happened reported that many tons of fertilizer, calcium cyanide and calcium carbide were stored at the site...

The young poorly trained firefighters - likely inadvertently caused their own deaths and the catastrophic explosion that followed . My idea of a scenario is a small explosion and /or fire broke as these things do in large scale industrial storage areas. The young firefighters began pouring water on the fire...and perhaps decided to wet down other stacks of bags or drums of nearby products... Large amounts of Calcium carbide plus water instantaneously produces plumes of acetylene gas which would have been ignited by the remains of the original fire producing the first large explosion. This large explosion produced a shock wave necessary to cause the many tons of fertilizer to explode and produced the gigantic explosion that caused most of the damage.

[biplanebluey]

The TV World news reports I heard when the incident happened reported that many tons of fertilizer, calcium cyanide and calcium carbide were stored at the site...

The young poorly trained firefighters - likely inadvertently caused their own deaths and the catastrophic explosion that followed . My idea of a scenario is a small explosion and /or fire broke as these things do in large scale industrial storage areas. The young firefighters began pouring water on the fire...and perhaps decided to wet down other stacks of bags or drums of nearby products... Large amounts of Calcium carbide plus water instantaneously produces plumes of acetylene gas which would have been ignited by the remains of the original fire producing the first large explosion. This large explosion produced a shock wave necessary to cause the many tons of fertilizer to explode and produced the gigantic explosion that caused most of the damage.

I presume?????

[attrayant]

I haven't read much about this aside from the initial reports. Were firefighters really spraying water on a chemical fire that had a high likelihood of containing alkali metals? Don't they have firemen training schools in China?

[JDGRUEN]

The TV World news reports I heard when the incident happened reported that many tons of fertilizer, calcium cyanide and calcium carbide were stored at the site...

The young poorly trained firefighters - likely inadvertently caused their own deaths and the catastrophic explosion that followed . My idea of a scenario is a small explosion and /or fire broke as these things do in large scale industrial storage areas. The young firefighters began pouring water on the fire...and perhaps decided to wet down other stacks of bags or drums of nearby products... Large amounts of Calcium carbide plus water instantaneously produces plumes of acetylene gas which would have been ignited by the remains of the original fire producing the first large explosion. This large explosion produced a shock wave necessary to cause the many tons of fertilizer to explode and produced the gigantic explosion that caused most of the damage.

I presume?????

Educated guess based on the few facts that I learned from news reports. Go google - youtube -- small quantities of calcium carbide when placed in water or water is sprayed on it ... Then you will see what a hundred tons might do...

[JDGRUEN]

I haven't read much about this aside from the initial reports. Were firefighters really spraying water on a chemical fire that had a high likelihood of containing alkali metals? Don't they have firemen training schools in China?

The entire point of this whole sad episode is that these young firefighters had no real training at all ... They are/were men who were employed by the private companies who owned or stored the chemicals there... not trained government firefighters... And yes they would pour water on a chemical fire... they new no better... criminal acts to place them in that situation...

[Publicus]

The following report in the state online news organisation The Paper was censored by the Tianjin Provincial Public Security Bureau Internet Police. Google does however have the page capture. The Epoch Times online journal in New York City operated by Chinese dissidents provided the translation below...

"Something is not right. Everyone withdraw now."

— Captain of Team Four fire brigade, moments before the first explosion

2015-08-15 21:13 来自 绿政公署

http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:CvhkFJlFFvYJ:www.thepaper.cn/newsDetail_forward_1364569+&cd=3&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us

A family member © of a missing firefighter from the recent explosions at a chemical warehouse protests outside a hotel where authorities are holding a press conference in Tianjin, China, on Sunday. The official death toll from two massive explosions in the Chinese port city has risen to 112. (STR/AFP/Getty Images)

The page was however captured and translated as follows....

The group of firefighters detailed in The Paper’s report belongs to the Tianjin Port Fire Brigade, specifically, Team Four

There are either 30 or 40 members in Team Four, according to interviewees who spoke to The Paper, and Phoenix. Only six of them have been found, raising the possibility that between 24 and 34 were killed in the blast. The authorities have not clarified the exact number of members in Team Four.

At around 11 p.m., contract firefighter Ma Chao (a pseudonym) spotted the first fire in two rows of containers, as well as a “crackling” on the rooftop of a dorm about 300 meters (984 feet) away from the epicenter of what would later become the explosion’s ground zero. The 18 year-old Ma and his colleague thought an accident had occurred in a fireworks warehouse.

Wu Wei, also a member of Team Four, said he spotted the fire slightly earlier, at 10:50 p.m., and rushed downstairs; having not heard advice from headquarters on how to respond. “The first reaction of seeing fire is surely to fight it,” he told The Paper.

Wu was lucky to make it out alive. The alarm sounded and they hustled in, approaching the flames. Wu was dispatched to find water, and broke through an iron gate to hook up the hose to a hydrant. “Something is not right. Everyone withdraw now,” said the captain over the radio. And then the first massive explosion happened, throwing Wei into the nearby garage, trapping him under large rocks. “A steel rod flew right past my neck. It almost pierced me,” he said.

There were two other members of Team Four who are known to have survived: Lin Ming, who was off that night, and was awoken by the massive blast; and a 19-year-old crew member whom he caught up with as he ran to the scene to help with the wounded. They later found there were only six remaining members from Team Four.

On Aug. 14, Xinhua, the official news agency, reported that six firefighters had “sacrificed themselves” in fighting the blaze, but no Team Four member was present on the list.

Ma Chao, in his interview with The Paper, said they did not know that there were explosive chemicals stored there.

According to Southern Weekend, a newspaper in Guangdong known for its edgy reporting, water should not have been used to fight the fire.

The newspaper stated that the chemical engineer said it was common sense that water not be used to fight a chemical fire. “Not to mention that cyanide, once it encounters water, will explode like a chemical weapon,” the report continued, paraphrasing the engineer. “It’s a substance like calcium carbide. Putting water on it is equivalent to detonating an explosion.”

http://www.theepochtimes.com/n3/1723316-dozens-of-firefighters-feared-dead-in-tianjin-blasts/?sidebar=morein

[attrayant]

For anyone who's forgotten their basic chemistry (which is probably most of you so don't feel bad), here's a short video showing what happens when the alkali metals come into contact with water:

Summary: there is an intensely exothermic (energy releasing) reaction and hydrogen gas is liberated. The resulting liquid is a corrosive alkali. The heat energy from the reaction ignites the hydrogen gas resulting in an explosion that causes the corrosive hydroxide liquid to come raining down on everyone. The amount of energy released increases as we move down the periodic table from lithium (the weakest) to cesium (the strongest). The color of the flames gives a clue as to what metal was involved. Orange for sodium, pinkish-purple for potassium.

So not only did the firefighters have no fire-fighting training, it would seem they don't get much basic chemistry education in high school either.

Edited August 19, 2015 by attrayant

[JDGRUEN]

For anyone who's forgotten their basic chemistry (which is probably most of you so don't feel bad), here's a short video showing what happens when the alkali metals come into contact with water:

Summary: there is an intensely exothermic (energy releasing) reaction and hydrogen gas is liberated. The resulting liquid is a corrosive alkali. The heat energy from the reaction ignites the hydrogen gas resulting in an explosion that causes the corrosive hydroxide liquid to come raining down on everyone. The amount of energy released increases as we move down the periodic table from lithium (the weakest) to cesium (the strongest). The color of the flames gives a clue as to what metal was involved. Orange for sodium, pinkish-purple for potassium.

So not only did the firefighters have no fire-fighting training, it would seem they don't get much basic chemistry education in high school either.

Very good post... To add to this Calcium Carbide combined with water produces a complicated hydrocarbon - acetylene gas and the reaction is very energetic... plumes of gas from such a large pile in that Chinese storage area.

[NeverSure]

The TV World news reports I heard when the incident happened reported that many tons of fertilizer, calcium cyanide and calcium carbide were stored at the site...

The young poorly trained firefighters - likely inadvertently caused their own deaths and the catastrophic explosion that followed . My idea of a scenario is a small explosion and /or fire broke as these things do in large scale industrial storage areas. The young firefighters began pouring water on the fire...and perhaps decided to wet down other stacks of bags or drums of nearby products... Large amounts of Calcium carbide plus water instantaneously produces plumes of acetylene gas which would have been ignited by the remains of the original fire producing the first large explosion. This large explosion produced a shock wave necessary to cause the many tons of fertilizer to explode and produced the gigantic explosion that caused most of the damage.

I presume?????

Is that all you have? Criticism? Geez...

Lemme tell you how to deliberately level a huge warehouse and kill any living thing that's anywhere near it. At one end inside the building put 10 kgs of calcium carbide in a metal or plastic tub and pour two gallons of water over it. That will immediately begin generating lots of acetylene gas - the same gas used in oxy-acetylene cutting torches used to cut thick steel.

Walk to the other end of the building and light a slow burning candle. That's it. When the building fills with the explosive gas and the gas reaches that candle it's all over.

Another way which will kill you too? Put that water on calcium cyanide.

Wanna make a really big explosion that will level everything for blocks around? Put one ton of ammonium nitrate where the shock wave of the above blast will set it off too. Ammonium nitrate in a rental truck is what blew the front half off the US Federal building in Oklahoma City in 1995. Perhaps you've heard of Timothy McVeigh.

The examples above are small quantities compared to what's mentioned in this China debacle.

Cheers.

Just the amount that would fit in a rental truck. This wasn't even contained in a building which would have made it a lot worse. This was just the shock wave. Ammonium Nitrate - nitrogen fertilizer.

[masquerade]

Because the fire fighters were responding to the fire from the first and a minor blast, not knowing that the mother of all blasts was about to take them out. There is no evidence as yet that what if any chemicals were involved, but there is conjecture from outside of China that it could have been a nuclear strike. This conjecture is backed up with scientific theories, due to the size of the crater and how the land around the crater appeared after the blast. Also, containers lying in the first crater nearby had the tell tale effects of extreme heat stripping them back to bare metal, something that could not have been caused through the first blast and highly unlikely from a chemical reaction. At this stage, bodies of the fire fighters have not been found and are believed to have perished, of which also is unlikely from a chemical blast.

[attrayant]

Conjecture backed-up with theories? Got anything else?

We've been sniffing the skies for post-detonation radiological traces pretty regularly since the nuclear test ban treaty of the 60s, and we're pretty good at it.

And even if we weren't actively looking for such evidence, the fallout would eventually make its way over the Korean Peninsula and Japan.

When nukes go off, we don't need to rely on conjecture to know if they really happened.

Edited August 19, 2015 by attrayant

[Publicus]

Don't feed the trolls.

[Usernames]

Answer? Because China doesn't give a damn. It poisons its own people, rivers, and arable land. It pollutes its air. And now it sends its firefighters in like lemmings going off a cliff. China kills its own people. Mercilessly. Through indifference and greed.

[simonuk]

As a 15 year firefighter in some of the UKs busiest fire stations I can assure you that many UK firefighters would not have the level of chemistry knowledge many of you seem to expect.

Firefighters have basic chemistry knowledge.

Simply put we are expected to deal with an infinite number of scenarios.

Building construction, car technology, high angle rope rescue,swift water rescue among the others.

We train hard and we train everyday ,I'd say 50% of my crew are uni educated but chemical knowledge would be limited to those that worked near specific risks.

We operate in chemical situations using chem data numbers.. (Id numbers )which we use to research the risks.

Without proper hazard and info signs we would be totally ignorant.

Upon arrival we may if lucky see a warning plate with a id number on it...

[JDGRUEN]

When I made my earlier post, I referred to the chemicals - 'fertilizers' (nitrogen based with other chemicals), Calcium Cyanide and Calcium Carbide. My sources were three different Cable TV World News programs... France24.com, BBC and World News Asia (Singapore). They all cited in one broadcast or another the presence of these chemicals in huge quantities as reported to them by Chinese Government Authorities (no details on who that was exactly). Plus these same sources made it clear that that the firefighters that were missing were primarily young men who worked for companies related to the storage pier management and/or the Import / Export Companies who owned the chemicals. The reports cited that the mostly young firefighters were poorly trained. So to extrapolate that these mostly young poorly trained firefighters would spray water on chemicals like Calcium Carbide - to me is not far fetched at all ...

And I believe the huge amounts of fertilizer could create a blast big enough to put a small city into it ... The home mobile phone video of the second blast that I saw on TV taken from a balcony was stupendous. I have never seen anything quite so impressive. It seemed to have the same sudden explosive force of Mount St. Helens volcano blowing off back around 1980.

The TV New Reporters were not putting together the Calcium Carbide and water as being a flash point to ignite the fertilizer. I am familiar with Calcium Carbide and water since childhood having had an antique Miner's Lantern made of brass that used Calcium Carbide to make a flame in front of the polished brass reflector. I was able to get Calcium Carbide back then and thought the lantern was quite marvelous. But I did make note of the very vigorous nature of the chemical and that it had to be handled carefully as the reaction can get away from you.

[Truth4All]

The TV World news reports I heard when the incident happened reported that many tons of fertilizer, calcium cyanide and calcium carbide were stored at the site...

The young poorly trained firefighters - likely inadvertently caused their own deaths and the catastrophic explosion that followed . My idea of a scenario is a small explosion and /or fire broke as these things do in large scale industrial storage areas. The young firefighters began pouring water on the fire...and perhaps decided to wet down other stacks of bags or drums of nearby products... Large amounts of Calcium carbide plus water instantaneously produces plumes of acetylene gas which would have been ignited by the remains of the original fire producing the first large explosion. This large explosion produced a shock wave necessary to cause the many tons of fertilizer to explode and produced the gigantic explosion that caused most of the damage.

Look at all the pictures online. Ground Zero is flat out a Nuclear event-- everything is Gone. No fertilizer bomb!!

Nuclear Blackmail by somebody-- for what? Currency devaluation without permission from the Fed, BIS, World Bank??

[JDGRUEN]

The TV World news reports I heard when the incident happened reported that many tons of fertilizer, calcium cyanide and calcium carbide were stored at the site...

The young poorly trained firefighters - likely inadvertently caused their own deaths and the catastrophic explosion that followed . My idea of a scenario is a small explosion and /or fire broke as these things do in large scale industrial storage areas. The young firefighters began pouring water on the fire...and perhaps decided to wet down other stacks of bags or drums of nearby products... Large amounts of Calcium carbide plus water instantaneously produces plumes of acetylene gas which would have been ignited by the remains of the original fire producing the first large explosion. This large explosion produced a shock wave necessary to cause the many tons of fertilizer to explode and produced the gigantic explosion that caused most of the damage.

Look at all the pictures online. Ground Zero is flat out a Nuclear event-- everything is Gone. No fertilizer bomb!!

Nuclear Blackmail by somebody-- for what? Currency devaluation without permission from the Fed, BIS, World Bank??

700 Tons of chemicals stored there ... How man HUNDRED TONS was Fertilizer...? No radiation cloud detected ... Get a GRIP ...

[JDGRUEN]

"Mystery" Cyanide Foam Covers Streets In China After Tianjin Storms As "Massive Fish Die-Off" Photographed

Party ties doesn’t seem to constitute the type of wholesale, rigorous investigation that would indicate Beijing is serious about getting to the bottom of how 700 tonnes of toxic chemicals ended up being stored at a facility that was only licensed to warehouse a fraction of that total.

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2015-08-20/mystery-cyanide-foam-covers-streets-china-after-tianjin-storms-massive-fish-die-phot