• The Incident – First Glance;

• The Port Fire Authority;

• The ‘Missing’ teenage Firefighters;

• Death Toll Update;

• Tianjin Port Group;

• Tianjin Deputy Mayor Mr. He Shushan;

• Chinese Communist Party Leadership Reactions;

• Corrupt Lancashire Magpies.

It is not the intention of this Editorial, or any other Editorial, to attack the integrity of one nation or another. It is a sad fact of life that human error and sometimes criminality driven by financial greed occurs in every nation on the face of this Earth.

It is also a sad fact of life that when these major errors, which lead to catastrophes occur, it is inevitable that when the profiteers are running away this world’s Firefighters are marching the opposite direction into the abyss, to save those left to survive on their own, profiteers having long since having taken flight in the base survival of the fittest…

It has been long recognised by the Firefighters of the world that personal risk always exists in even the most innocuous of situations and in the least expected incidents.

Service education, training, and retraining until the point of boredom are the only bulwarks which exist to ameliorate , to some extent, the ever present threat on every incident.

Many times it has be said, based on experience, that untold Firefighters lives have been saved by the precious few minutes it takes to get to the incident during which if this or that was going to explode it might have done so.

The deadliest and most painful in the cost of Firefighters lives are those incidents when the initial deployment has taken place and the second or third wave of assisting crews/teams have just arrived. Such was of course the appalling circumstances in the Twin Towers great catastrophe.

Similarly if we are to interpret the Chief of Tianjin’s Fire Department deployment description correctly this was exactly the circumstance at this tragedy…

Regrettably, as ever, as these politicians rush back from holiday and wherever the hid themselves during this tragic annihilation of all these crews they will be the first to criticise the victims, the Firefighters.

Already much has already been made by them in criticism of the lack of, or at least, the indifference towards the training of these poor Chinese Firefighters who were involved with and lost their lives.

During the apogee of the UK Fire Service, long since gone due to these parsimonious UK politicians and their Trade Unions who are not worthy of the courage or lives of their own Firefighters and who cannot even find it in common decency to pay them the correct pensions.

It was a requirement of law (now dispensed with by profiteers) that every Firefighter and Officer from cradle to grave must receive as far as humanely possible the central training to National Standards and whilst on Station would engage on continuous training to ensure that they knew as much as possible about every single premises they might attend allied with acquired local  knowledge of the risks particularly chemicals, their storage and chemical processes that they would be likely to face in the event of an emergency.

This thrust of safety was supported legislatively by powers of inspection and by plain common-sense which undoubtedly saved countless lives both civilian and Fire Service. All once more consigned to the scrap heap by the self serving  ‘Thieving Magpie’ Chief Fire Officers of today lead by the greatest donkey and wide boy of all  Peter Holland the government ‘independent’ Fire Advisor…

So we think, in our arrogance, that this would not happen here, then the Bugler suggests it might be time to think again…

So how do these Chinese politicians like their UK counterparts know what happened? What crystal balls are they gazing into? It seems to the Bugler that no ‘up at the sharp end’ witnesses remain alive to tell their tale so how do they know enough to criticise?

Perhaps if they knew more and criticised less by asking those who have spent their lives at the sharp end life for the Firefighters surviving families may just be a little less troubled during this their greatest nightmare become reality…

Take for example the vision of the fireball after the major explosion from which with the sparse knowledge at our disposal it is still possible to make some considered deductions.

Much has been made of calcium carbide at though it is transhipped in loose bags flung into the back of a truck. If politicians new anything perhaps they may have forgotten the United Nations/IMO transhipment guidance incorporated into almost every nation in the world’s legislation.

Similarly with hydrogen cyanide the bête noir of this particular tragedy yet no one seems to have considered the potential of the reported substantial presence of the fertiliser ammonium nitrate of which the fireball exhibits all the symptoms of a classical sympathetic ammonium nitrate explosion.

Reuters recently reported the following on the 11^th August 2015 on PRC imports… “Fertilisers in China have been subject to favourable tax policies since 1994 in order to guarantee supplies and help boost grain output, but the system had been subject to abuse in recent years, the Ministry of Commerce said in a statement.

“China is aiming to bring growth in chemical fertiliser use to zero by 2020 in an effort to ease pollution problems in its vast countryside. Excessive fertiliser use has been associated with damaging algae blooms and soil acidification.”.

Ammonium nitrate has a well earned grim reputation over the years for its potential to cause massive explosions. It first came to public notice in Galveston in Texas in 1947 during a ship fire. In attempting to extinguish/smother the bagged fertiliser on the ship the hatches were battened down. In the resultant explosion the Galveston Fire Department was wiped out along with almost 600 people and the city , as such , ceased to exist.

Lesson number one ammonium nitrate does not like to be confined because in some odd chemical way it becomes unstable and sensitised when heated and confined.

Next came the discovery by radical groups that when a carbon element (sometimes in the form of diesel fuel) is mixed with the AN it becomes once more unstable and sensitive but still requiring detonating heat. In effect a cheap readily available bomb last used to horrific effect in Oklahoma USA.

This is not a treatise on explosives per se but on ANFO(Ammonium Nitrate-Fuel Oil) explosives or when through accidental circumstances such a combination might arise. Commercial explosives react much faster than ANFO with little or no fireball and a much smaller pressure wave. By contrast a great classical signature of an ANFO is the much longer dwell time as the classical fireball develops and of course with it the disproportionately higher pressure wave.

Another classical symptom is the acidic taste in the air after such an explosion, once tasted never forgotten…

It seems on first glance given the area of destruction and the clear symptoms of a quite huge pressure wave  that this was the case in Tianjin but it remains to be seen.

There are several notable professional impressions of the Fire Services present, because there seems to have been a three tier approach. The Chinese National Fire Service (two tiers under the Ministry of Public Security and local governments)  and the first attending service (third tier) the Tianjin Port Group Fire Service, the latter distinguished by the orange colour of their uniforms.

The Chinese National Fire Service and their counterparts the industrial Tianjin Port Group Fire Service appliances seem impressively modern and heavyweight and the crews similarly seem personally well equipped. In the main, this should reflect the pay and conditions of any service, though a high proportion of personnel seem very youthful they appear nonetheless committed and courageous, and though the Port Group’s uniforms seem remarkably clean which in its own way tells a tale.

This may reflect the small number of working incidents which they have attended within the Port Authority area and/or the lack of routine working drills which inevitably entails the soiling and necessary cleaning of personal gear.

It should be said that due to the small number of incidents, which incidentally provide the all essential ‘fireground’  experience it is an endemic problem in all ‘industrial’ Fire Departments including airfield Fire Services worldwide, in providing realistic training, and above all else daily motivation.

Many young Fire Service trainees in such circumstances if they are vocational Firefighters will either ‘wither on the vine’ or migrate to join municipal Fire Departments.

The first response crews to such incidents are always the resident Fire Service who have the advantage over their supporting colleagues from the ‘outside’ municipality of literally knowing their way around, the street layout, where the water supplies, etc, are. A situation addressed by regular major exercises between both Commands but nevertheless it is reasonable to assume that the municipal Fire Departments by the very nature of their repetitive work will carry the greater capability, or at least they should.

Least there be any regression in non-service reader to smug self satisfaction that all is well in the UK they should be minded to visit their local Fire Station and ask about their current levels of training because, quite simply, it is in a parlous state at both National and local Fire Service level which will inevitably lead, like this tragedy, to the loss of both civilian and Firefighters’ lives.

And so it is time to look at the scenario on the ground in Tianjin and to the forgotten and bereaved families of our Brothers in the People’s Republic of China.

The families can speak for themselves and have done so already in the South China Morning Post under the banner headline…

“  ‘Forgotten’ heroes: firemen of the Tianjin Port Group”.

Families of missing firefighters employed at port say they are treated as ‘second-class’ crews and not enough has been done to trace them.

Wei county, an under-developed rural area in Hebei province, had never received much attention until yesterday when more than 50 heartbroken relatives of firemen tried to force their way into a press conference about the huge explosions at a dangerous materials warehouse in Tianjin.

“I need an explanation. I need to find out where my son is,” said Wang Xiurong.

Wang is the mother of a fireman from the No.5 team of the Tianjin Port Group fire department. It along with No. 4 team was among the first fire crews to arrive at the scene of the massive blasts on Wednesday night. All 25 firefighters from No. 5 team are missing and at least 11 of them are from Wei county.

Big companies and enterprises such as ports and chemical factories are legally obliged to recruit their own fire departments to deal with emergencies.

These fire departments are often seen as lowest level in a three-tier firefighting system on the mainland. The first two tiers of firefighters are controlled by the Ministry of Public Security and local governments.

Firefighters working for emergency crews such as the No.5 team at Tianjin port work on contract and do not receive the same benefits as top-tier staff who have the same status as paramilitary police, according to their families.

The company firefighters are usually the first to respond to an alarm in their area as they are the closest, sometimes exposing them to the greatest danger, as happened at Tianjin port, said a source close to the operation and in charge of fire crews at the Ministry of Public Security.

The company crews are recruited and trained by their firms, said the source, under the guidance of fire departments controlled by the public security ministry.

But Wang Baoxia, the sister-in-law of a fireman from Wei county missing in the blasts, said the crews received little training

“They weren’t trained when they were recruited. I don’t know what kind of training they received later,” she said.

She also alleged that some of firefighters from the county were under age when they were recruited.

Her brother-in-law Wang Quan, 39, was considered senior in the team, but most were in their 20s and several were 18 or 19, meaning they were recruited under the legal age of 18.

The source at the public security ministry said it was common practice to recruit men who were legally too young to join.

“Recruiters don’t actually check the age,” the source said. “The people applying give their ages themselves. So if they write 18 then we take it as 18.”

Wang said that Wei county’s economy used to centre on its coalmines, but since the closure of pits young men have turned to firefighting, deeming it a good career path.

Yuan Chenggang, the father of 18-year-old fireman Yuan Xuxu, another member of No.5 team, said he was not surprised his son had decided to join the fire crew.

“It’s a job to make money, of course he would go,” he said.

Yuan, along with other relatives did not know how much theirs sons made a month (£98), but estimated it was just over 1,000 yuan ( £1176.0 pa-Average wage £5769.0).

Some of the missing firemen from Wei county had only been working as firefighters for several months, relatives said. The families decided that after three days waiting for news of their loved ones they had to take action.

“We heard that there would be a press conference and some officials would attend, so we wanted to come and ask who do our children belong to? Not the police, not the military, not the government,” said the aunt of a missing fireman. “Contract-based [firefighter] or not, all lives are equal.”

Families were furious that official figures on the number of firefighters killed in the disaster only covered crews under the Ministry of Public Security and they are afraid that those not “in the system” would be forgotten.

Officials who arrived after the press conference told the families they were collecting DNA samples to help find their loved ones.

But when asked at a later press conference about missing firefighters in the Tianjin port teams, the chief of Tianjin’s fire department, Zhou Tian, said: “The fire department of the Tianjin Port Group is not under the management of the public security ministry’s Tianjin fire department.”

Currently there are 38 known dead and unknown number of missing Firefighters…

On Friday 16:19hrs 21st August 2015 rescue authorities updated the death toll from the Tianjin warehouse explosions to 129, with 44 others missing and unaccounted for.

All the dead have been identified, including 76 Firefighters, seven policemen, and 46 other persons. A running total of 129 fatalities.

The missing, unaccounted for, includes a further 28 Firefighters, four policemen, and 12 other persons. A running total of 44 persons.

It seems that when the final death toll  of around 179 is concluded it is expected that well over over 50% of the fatalities will involve Firefighters making this incident the worst disaster for first responders in the history of this Chinese State..

There are 474 injured in hospital, including seven in a critical condition.

Song Tianyi, a family member of a Firefighter who died in the explosions, called for the harshest punishment. “If they are not sentenced to death, my brother and I cannot die in peace,” Song said.

A relative of a missing firefighter from the explosions in Tianjin, pictured on August 16, 2015 (AFP Photo/-)

Tears, Grief and overwhelming Sadness are the same all over this Vale of Tears called the World.

Pause to to remember them and their families because to pause and think is to pray for them…

THE LOST…Go Here.

Tianjin Port Group is/was located in a modern monolithic steel framed building on a street corner site on 6^th Road and Route S11, which also contained Port Police HQ.

It was situated 400 metres due west of the approximate site of the explosion.

It is probable in keeping with many commercial arrangements in China that domestic live in accommodation would have been provided for the Firefighters for which they would pay a monthly fee.

The entrance to the particular port area in question lies approximately 350 metres to the west from PGHQ. This area of the port has seen extremely rapid expansion even over the last 12 months.

There seems little doubt that both PGHQ and Police HQ will have sustained both resident personnel casualties and quite severe structural damage in the resultant explosion(s)

It appears from reports that there were around 3000 tonnes of chemicals in this immediate storage area including 700 tonnes of sodium cyanide, 500 tonnes of potassium nitrate, and 800 tonnes of ammonium nitrate.

When taken in perspective this is hardly a huge amount of ammonium nitrate if shipped in 20 X 40 tonnes international containers though it is unclear whether it was in bulk or more usually 1 metric tonne bags, but it was clearly sufficient though conflicting reports state only 10 containers were present which would amount to ‘only’ 400 tonnes of AN.

On early Wednesday evening of August 12^th 2015 it would appear that the watch/Team on duty, which seems routinely to consist of 30 personnel were engaged on site in routine drill. This would normally have been carried out by day but because of the recent high ambient temperatures it was decided that the evening was a more conducive time but the high ambient temperatures may also have played a role in events leading to the initial fire.

Reports indicate that the crews in training came across an incipient fire and over the unreported period which followed it is clear that crews got to work setting into pillar hydrants to feed water cannons mounted on the tops of their fire appliances.

The questions which remain to be addressed are how long this initial fire fighting response proceeded before assistance was called for?

It seems given the death toll among Port and National Fire Services that ‘mixed’ crews were attending.

A further question also arises of how long fire fighting operations continued without a  consideration of some form of fall back/evacuation redeployment?

Because it seems as a prelude several minor explosions occurred leading to one substantial  explosion described by the National Earthquake Bureau as a modest TNT equivalent of 3 tonnes which undoubtedly led to the sympathetic catastrophic detonation, once more described as modest, of TNT equivalent of 21 tonnes at approximately 23:35hrs.

It seems all this activity occurred over a period of hours rather than minutes given the time of the final explosion.

Currently the concerns are heavy rainfall on a heavily contaminated site which can indeed not only wash contaminants out of the atmosphere where there is already photographic evidence of white crystals on the site and the local streets but  lead to unexpected reactions which pose more problems for those struggling to bring some chemical stability to a continuing unstable local environment. 

At this point in any major catastrophe little of this is understood by those who have been evacuated and lost their families and homes and as usual the perennial unanswerable questions arise in any jurisdiction.

Why were these materials stored there? Who knew about them? And who is to blame?

The simple answer is that if a society wants all the benefits that these chemicals bring to their daily lives then unfortunately  in a shrinking land mass they have to be stored somewhere and inevitably there will be close by domestic neighbourhoods to provide the employed with accommodation…it was ever thus…

The Deputy Mayor said there were about 1,300 tonnes of ammonium nitrate and potassium nitrate, about 500 tonnes of sodium and magnesium, and 700 tonnes of sodium cyanide, among other chemicals, in the warehouse when the explosions took place.

“The accident has led to great loss of life and property. I feel very sad and guilty,” he said. “As the leading official of the city, I have an unavoidable responsibility for the accident.”

He also said Tianjin would relocate all warehouses for hazardous chemicals to Nangang, a petrochemical base about 25km from the city centre

Huang pledged to build a park and monument at the site to commemorate firefighters who died tackling the accident.

Tianjin blasts by numbers (up to Wednesday 19^th August 2015).

The Chinese Communist Party’s top leadership in its State Council, or Cabinet, was infuriated with the Tianjin government’s attempts to underplay the death toll of the twin blasts that rocked the port city more than two weeks ago, and which has now risen to 145.

It has vowed to conduct a “rigorous” investigation into the cause and has pledged it will publish the findings.

The incident sparked widespread outrage over alleged safety violations and possible official collusion, and fears of pollutants contaminating the air and water of Tianjin, home to about 15 million people.

Thousands of tonnes of hazardous chemicals were stored at the site officials have said. The  warehouse and container storage dock area was built within 600 metres of residential buildings, despite a regulation mandating any hazardous material storage facilities must be at least 1,000 metres away.

Communist authorities and state-run media have sought to pin blame for the disaster on local individuals and officials, rather than systemic factors.

Prosecutors yesterday criminally detained 11 senior officials and port executives for alleged negligence in connection with the disaster.

The Party’s propaganda department called a meeting with a handful of selected media to encourage them to look into the company that ran the facility – Ruihai International Logistics.

On 19^th August 2015 Xinhua, the Chinese State News Agency published an investigative report that quoted company executives who had been detained by the police as saying they had good connections with government officials.

The article surprised many in the West since Xinhua is rarely aggressive in its reporting on major accidents in China given its status as the state-run news agency.

It seems that the Chinese Communist Party’s top leadership was dissatisfied with how the Tianjin authority handled the blasts at first and that is why the State media is taking the stance it has.

It is reported that the Tianjin port police had been called to help recover bodies from the disaster scene but the bodies were not being added to the official death toll at that time which seems strange given that this Port Police had lost personnel themselves.

The latest round of detentions includes officials at the Ministry of Transport, Tianjin’s municipal government and its port authority. Among them are city transport chief Wu Dai, Tianjin Port Group president Zheng Qingyue, as well as officials from the Binhai New Area, where the warehouse/storage was located.

Officials from the Tianjin’s city transport commission have been accused of illegally issuing business licences and failing to address illegal work carried out by Ruihai.

Tianjin Port Group, which is responsible for the port’s operations, was  also accused of poor management and failing to rectify safety risks at Ruihai.

Xinhua reported that Wang Jinwen, a Transport Ministry deputy inspector, was detained for alleged abuse of power. Also detained were Gao Huaiyou, Tianjin’s deputy work safety administration chief, and Wang Jiapeng, Tianjin’s deputy customs chief.

Police had earlier detained another 12 people including Ruihai owners Yu Xuewei and Dong Shexuan.

Separately, the Supreme People’s Procuratorate said on its website that prosecutors in the city were probing 11 officials for “abuse of power” and “dereliction of duty” over the blasts, which also injured hundreds of people.

In China, formal arrest normally comes after some time in police detention and sees the case handed to prosecutors, with trial and conviction almost guaranteed.

The 12 arrested include owners of Rui Hai International Logistics who were shown on state television last week, when they were already being held by police, “confessing” to using government connections to obtain safety permits.

Local residents were encouraged by the latest round of detentions given that this has been the highest international profile industrial accident in China for decades though China has regular serious accidents.

“I see this as a signal that officials will be punished, regardless of how elite they are,” said Zheng Lin, another property owner. “We were worried that they would not.”

But independent Chinese reporting was quashed in the aftermath according to government censorship notices posted on China Digital Times, a US-based website.

“Websites cannot privately gather information on the accident, and when publishing news cannot add individual interpretation without authorisation,” read one notice it cited as sent out by the Cyberspace Administration of China.

Industrial accidents are common in China, with corruption thought to be a key factor behind lax enforcement of safety regulations.

The head of China’s work safety watchdog — a former vice-mayor of Tianjin — has been sacked after being put under investigation for corruption, state media said on Wednesday.

Clean-up work continues at the scene of the explosions.

Footnote on Corruption:

It is well known that corruption is an endemic disease afflicting most politicians, business men, those in power in local government, and their staff whenever they yield to the temptation. It seems it is insufficient to have £1million when 2 million might do…

There is a resonance in what is being demonstrated in China in a so called totalitarian State where the emphasis is, rightly, clearly on placing the ultimate responsibility for such matters directly on the head of the individual.

Whilst in a juxtaposition in the West the first point of refuge for the guilty is always to blame the system. In effect the system made it too easy for them to be a thieves and a vagabonds.

Closer to home in Lancashire in the UK we have a self-confessed thief of expenses County Councillor O’Toole the local Conservative Party Whip.

He has not been arrested or charged with common fraud though the written evidence of his claims are clear for anyone to read and the Chief Constable and his staff supported by the local Crime Commissioner and his staff have gone to extraordinary lengths at considerable tax payers expense to defend O’Toole who actually confessed on tape in a police station interview (a tape which has since mysteriously vanished) that he knew he was claiming more from the Taxpayers than he knew he was entitled to for no less than 13 years…

O’Toole and his equally corrupt louche chum Holland supported by a self-evidently corrupt incumbent Chief Fire Officer Kenny allied with the Chair of the Fire Authority County Councillor Frank De Molfetta have refused, in contravention of the law, to release both O’Toole’s and Holland expenses incurred at the Lancashire Fire & Rescue Service, but this is a matter the Bugler will return to publicly shortly.

How politically embarrassing for the UK Foreign & Commonwealth Office when they next attempt to give the Chinese a lecture on Democracy for at least in Communist China they seem to have their priorities right and could be forgiven for rejecting the UK’s claims that PRC China exists within a totalitarian corrupt State.

It clearly seems that Lancashire UK can certainly teach the Chinese Government a trick or two on corruption can they not?

Perhaps someone in higher UK office might be minded to inform the Bugler who has acted correctly in pursuit of the Citizens and Taxpayers rights in all these matters – the UK or The Peoples Republic of China?

 Right around the world the Brothers and Sisters undaunted still continue to serve some quite vile politicians…

 To Death or Glory…what would they know about Integrity or Decency…