2 dead in blast at German chemical park

Smoke billows following an explosion in Wiesdorf, Leverkusen, in this photo obtained from social media. (Reuters)

An explosion at a chemical park in western Germany left two people dead and five missing yesterday, the site operator said, but a warning for residents to stay indoors was lifted after several hours. At least 31 people were injured, one of them critically, in the blast that rocked the Chempark complex in the city of Leverkusen at around 09:40am, site operator Currenta said. All of those affected worked at the site. In an updated toll in the evening, Currenta said a second body had been found by rescue crews. It also revised upwards the number of missing employees from three to five. “The search for the missing continues at full speed. Sadly, hopes of finding them alive are dwindling,” said Chempark head Lars Friedrich. The cause of the explosion, which was heard several kilometres away and sent a column of black smoke into the air, was not yet known. Germany’s NINA warning app sent an “extreme danger” alert to residents, telling them to stay home and shut doors and windows for most of the day. The explosion happened at Chempark’s waste incineration site in Leverkusen’s Buerrig district. The area is separate from the main industrial park nearby that houses numerous chemical companies including Bayer, Lanxess and Evonik Industries. “We are deeply saddened by this tragic accident,” said Chempark’s Friedrich. Experts were racing to identify the composition of the smoke, he told journalists. Asked whether the cloud might contain toxic gases, Friedrich declined to speculate but said nothing could be ruled out. City mayor Uwe Richrath said it was “a dark day for the people of Leverkusen”. Playgrounds in the city’s Buerrig and Opladen neighbourhoods would be closed, he said. Residents were also advised not to eat fruit and vegetables from their garden. By yesterday evening, the city of Leverkusen said measurements of pollution levels taken throughout the day “were unremarkable”, allowing the warning to shelter indoors to gradually be lifted. The last people to get the all-clear were those living closest to the blast zone in Leverkusen’s Buerrig district. Locals were however told not to touch or try to clean away any soot particles they might find, until further analysis by experts. The explosion had sparked a fire in tanks used as storage for liquid solvents awaiting incineration, Friedrich said. The blaze took several hours to put out, with firefighters from nearby Cologne called in to help. Three of the tanks “were completely or partially destroyed”, Friedrich said, making it impossible to tell for now where the explosion started. North Rhine-Westphalia state’s interior minister Herbert Reul said 300 firefighters narrowly managed to prevent another tank exploding, which contained poisonous waste. Large numbers of police, firefighters and rescue crews were at the scene for much of the day, as well as pollution-detection experts. Police in Cologne said they temporarily closed several motorways and told drivers to avoid the area. Locals shared images on social media of the black cloud rising into the air, with some saying their windows were rattled by the force of the explosion. According to a report in Der Spiegel magazine, the blast was measured as far as away.