Online chat rooms first drew attention to the safety failures revealed by the explosions. Local residents had no idea there were dangerous chemicals on site. The warehouse was barely 600 metres away from the nearest residential block, whereas the law says the minimum safe distance is 1km.

[...]provided little information about the nature and quantity of the dangerous chemicals kept in the industrial warehouse that exploded.

But many of those who died were “contract firemen”: mostly young, inexperienced, ill-trained workers hired by the port, not the local government. As social media pointed out, many of the firemen who arrived before the explosions—and who were killed by them—were contract workers.

posted 3170 days ago