Tuong Nguyen

The Explosion in Tianjin, China

On Wednesday, August 12, 2015, the whole world was shocked by two massive explosions in Tianjin, China.  These explosions was caused by the small fires in the chemical warehouse of Tianjin Dongjiang Port Ruihai International Logistics, yet they are still investigating what caused the fires. Anyway, the toxics like calcium carbide, sodium cyanide, and sodium nitrate are now in the air as the smoke that we can see in the photograph. Besides that, the large hole was created after the explosions. They have not estimated the size of the hole yet, but it is a very large hole.

As we can see from the photograph, everything in that area was completely destroyed. On the left top corner, the big buildings were burned. The explosions left behind a view of desolation and a very large hole. When we compare the hole to the buildings around, it just liked we can put 4 or 5 buildings into it. Not only that, the hole is very deep and through the depth of the hole, we can easily guest the strength of two explosions. According to bbc.com, the first explosion was equal to 3 tons of TNT, and the second one was equal to 21 tons of TNT, or as the report of the China Earthquake Networks Center, the second explosion was equal to a 2.9 earthquake. When I first saw the photograph, the first thought came to my mind was that this photo was fake; there was no explosion that was as strong as this one. Yet, I now believe it is real because “24 tons of TNT” can possibly create this hole. Besides that, based on the statistic numbers of these two explosions on CNN news, at least 112 people were killed and more than 95 people are still missing, but I believe that the work “missing” they used in their article equals to the work “evaporating” because I do not think that people can be “missing” in huge explosions like those two. That is an ugly truth. When I look at the hole in the picture, I imagine the fight scenes in the manga called Dragon Balls. The main character fights his enemies and creates the holes that are as large as this one in the photograph. I just can use that image to compare to the hole in the photograph above because I cannot find any “real” image to compare to it.

In addition, beside the large-hole problem, the Government in Tianjin has to deal with the tons of chemicals were released after the explosions. As I mentioned above, sodium cyanide was one of the chemicals which were stored in the warehouse and the problem is that sodium cyanide is a highly toxic chemical. With 100-200mg sodium cyanide can kill you just in 2 hours. Now, imagine what will happen if you have more than 100 tons of sodium cyanide are scattered everywhere? According to Shi Luze, the chief of staff of the People's Liberation Army's Beijing Military Region, there were more than 100 tons of sodium cyanide in that area. They were working as hard as possible to clean them before the rain showers come because the chemical can react with water to create hydrogen cyanide, a deadly toxic gas. However, in the official news in China, the number of sodium cyanide chemical is 700 tons. It is a huge problem for China government. As we can see in the photograph, the plumes of smoke were covering a whole area and I believe that those plumes of smoke were carrying a lot of toxic chemicals, including hydrogen cyanide. In my opinion, nothing worse than a rain with toxics because the toxics can be mixed into the water system. Now, it not only effects on Tianjin, but also effects on the other areas. Especially, the place where the explosions happened is near a river. Right now, we just can hope that China government had a plan to eliminate the toxic chemicals as many as possible.

There had been many explosions happened before, but these two explosions in Tianjin, China are the most serious explosions because of their strength and the toxic chemicals that they released. Therefore, China government need to work really hard to find out the cause of the explosions, the way to remove the hole, as well as the way to eliminate the toxics in Tianjin.  There were a lot of people were killed, so do not let the result of them kill more.