Massive explosions in Tianjin, China

[AOS-]

It seems that shooting in landscape mode isn't taught in China.
.

Or the majority of smartphone users for that matter.

 

[GTPorsche]

 

[CAMAROBOY69]

Some of those videos, wow.

Especially this one.

The video McLaren is talking about. It is not really that shocking to see but knowing what probably happened to them (just before the blast, another guy on the left comes around the corner) makes it a bit hard.

 

[Leonidae@MFT]

That was a big one indeed! I wonder what happened.. Did a dock worker get careless with cigar, or was there a leak of chemicals that were volatile and highly reactive..?

 

[Omnis]

BBC news showed the side of a container on a lorry which had been bent inwards along the whole side of it, can you imagine the force involved, and it was sheltered by an underpass

View attachment 429793

Not sheltered. Amplified.

Re: video blastwave guy. Hopefully he set up his phone to record and ran like hell.

 

[Encyclopedia]

There's been at least one more explosion.


Edit: No that was from another incident.

Another video from the explosions. Language warning!



Incredibly scary!

 

[homeforsummer]

A sense of the scale, from here.

Weird how some cars in that image look largely undamaged, yet objects further away than them are flattened. Guess it's just down to the shape of the fireball.

Hell of a mess though:

Some of the videos are terrifying.

 

[Slash]

Holy mother of 🤬!!!

 

[lxmmy]

Volkswagen lost over 1000 vehicles.

http://jalopnik.com/volkswagen-lost-thousands-of-new-cars-to-the-chinese-fi-1723837159

 

[Robin]

Weird how some cars in that image look largely undamaged, yet objects further away than them are flattened. Guess it's just down to the shape of the fireball.

I think because the cars were low to the ground, have flexibility with suspension and are more aerodynamically shaped than taller more angular structures they withstood the blast better. They are all still lined up, just scorched whereas containers have been thrown all over the place.

Volkswagen lost over 1000 vehicles.

Although they will probably get an insurance payout it's such a damn waste of labour and materials put into things which could have been used for decades.

 

[lxmmy]

I think because the cars were low to the ground, have flexibility with suspension and are more aerodynamically shaped than taller more angular structures they withstood the blast better. They are all still lined up, just scorched whereas containers have been thrown all over the place.



Although they will probably get an insurance payout it's such a damn waste of labour and materials put into things which could have been used for decades.

I couldn't imagine how many hours have been invested into building the cars to all being destroyed in the end.

 

[homeforsummer]

I think because the cars were low to the ground, have flexibility with suspension and are more aerodynamically shaped than taller more angular structures they withstood the blast better. They are all still lined up, just scorched whereas containers have been thrown all over the place.

I was referring to the colourful objects in the bottom left of the image - despite being the same distance away as those in the centre and far right, and closer than whatever the colourful patch is along the bottom of the image to the right, they seem to be largely intact.

 

[ROAD_DOGG33J]

@homeforsummer

I would wonder if the building there had any effects in reducing the damage in that area.

 

[Lewis_Hamilton_]

I only heard about this yesterday that it was "massive". Today I've seen nearly a dozen different clips, some unfortunately rather close to the center of the blast.

Holy 🤬 and God damn, almost like a small nuke was launched.

RIP to all the victims.

 

[Omnis]

Not a small nuke, just a lot of TNT. Let's not take the power of nuclear bombs so lightly.

 

[GTPorsche]

A nuke would have leveled much more in the blast radius than what the explosives that detonated did.

 

[homeforsummer]

And we probably wouldn't have many videos of it, either. At least not from so close.

 

[niky]

Not a small nuke, just a lot of TNT. Let's not take the power of nuclear bombs so lightly.

Reading through the reports, the estimated strength was about 10-20 tons of TNT.

That's about a thousand times less powerful than a small nuke.

Still damn scary.

 

[Dennisch]

Not a small nuke, just a lot of TNT. Let's not take the power of nuclear bombs so lightly.

A nuke would have leveled much more in the blast radius than what the explosives that detonated did.

Tiny atomic bomb

 

[TenEightyOne]

The Chinese still aren't saying what the contamination causing the mass evacuation of the surrounding area actually is.

 

[Robin]

Apparently it's Sodium Cyanide and they are evacuating everyone in a 3km radius.

Beggars belief that they are only finding this out now, didn't someone have a list of everything that was being stored in that area before they let emergency crews and journalists crawl all over the site without any protection whatsoever

 

[prisonermonkeys]

More explosions reported:

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

It's believed that first responders may have inadvertently contributed to the problem by fighting the fire with water, which reacted with the toxic materials.

 

[JKgo]

...One of the most chilling photo I've seen in a long while:

 

[CodeRedR51]

Larger version? Can we confirm that is real?

 

[Omnis]

It's real.

 

[MatskiMonk]

So, inevitably, man-down-pub was explaining to me the other night how the Chinese governments intolerance towards to it's large muslin communities culture may have led to this. Not saying I'm buying it, but I hadn't realised that might be an issue.

 

[Vegard]

So, inevitably, man-down-pub was explaining to me the other night how the Chinese governments intolerance towards to it's large muslin communities culture may have led to this. Not saying I'm buying it, but I hadn't realised that might be an issue.

How would that lead to an accident? Or are you implying that it wasn't an accident?

 

[niky]

How would that lead to an accident? Or are you implying that it wasn't an accident?

I believe man-down-pub was suggesting just that.

Not that Chinese industry actually needs outside intervention to muck up on a big scale.

 

[MatskiMonk]

Or are you implying that it wasn't an accident?

Man-down-pub was implying this could be the case. On this occasion man-down-pub didn't start the conversation with "I'm not racist, but...", and actually he seemed quite knowledgeable about calcium carbide and such. Like I say, I'm not sure I'm buying it, but in the context of Chinese government being somewhat oppressive towards Islam in certain areas it seemed like a reasonable suggestion. I'm not sure the public would be told about it, even if it was the case.

 

[CAMAROBOY69]

So, inevitably, man-down-pub was explaining to me the other night how the Chinese governments intolerance towards to it's large muslin communities culture may have led to this. Not saying I'm buying it, but I hadn't realised that might be an issue.

What is a man-down-pub?