As rainfall burns Tianjin residents’ skin, the head of the local State Administration of Work Safety is arrested
Beijing (AsiaNews) – As rain falls on Tianjin, some residents and journalists near the blast site have complained about skin burns from the reactions between water and some of the 3,000 tonnes of chemical material, including 700 tonnes of sodium cyanide, once stored in the warehouses that exploded in the city’s port.
Although Tianjin's environmental authorities said pollution in air and water remained at safe levels, one official told journalists that “the best way [to be safe] is to stay far away from the site" or cover oneself with waterproof canvas.
For residents, the situation is compounded by the authorities’ inaction in the area of compensation. Hundreds of them continue to protest calling on the government to pay up or buy them out after their homes were damaged by several explosions on 12 August.
The government has proposed to repair damaged homes but residents want more. For one protester who did not give his name, repairing the damage is a euphemism for doing nothing.
Instead, people want the government to buy back flats damaged in the blasts. After that, they would decide where to go.
Another, who gave the name of Pei, said that he is still paying the mortgage on his home. On top of that, now he has to pay rent for the place where he relocated his family. “We planned to have a child by this year,” he said, something that is now “impossible."
Residents are also angry about the lack of information. An official at Ruihai International Logistics, which owns the warehouse in the port area of the city where containers of hazardous chemicals were being stored at the time of last Wednesday’s blasts, said that chemicals stored in the containers might have exceeded safety limits.
The results is that water tested at 40 water-monitoring stations in the area on Monday contained high levels of cyanide, with some samples showing 28.4 times more cyanide than normal safety levels.
According to initial investigations, at least 17,500 houses suffered damage to their windows and doors from the blasts. Thousands of residents are thus left homeless.
City officials have set up temporary shelters in 12 schools and 3 residential complexes for up to 15,000 people, but it is not yet clear when evacuees will be able to return home.
The website of the graft-busting agency, the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection, said that Yang Dongliang, head of the State Administration of Work Safety, was suspected of "violations of party discipline and the law", a euphemism for graft. However, no correlation between this and the explosions has yet to be made.
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