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Web End = Nat Hazards (2015) 79:667672
DOI 10.1007/s11069-015-1827-2
SHORT COMMUNICATION
G. L. Liang1,2
Received: 4 May 2015 / Accepted: 27 May 2015 / Published online: 4 June 2015 Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht 2015
1 Introduction to the event
At around 7 p.m. local time on 6 April 2015, a huge explosion happened at a plant called Tenglong Aromatics (or Dragon Aromatics) in Fujian province, China. The plant produces paraxylene (PX), a chemical used in making polyester bre and plastics. The initial re shooting tens of feet into the air occurred after the explosion at the plant and was put out 21 h after the blast, which injured nineteen but no one died. But res have reignited at least three times since an initial blaze was extinguished, China local news reports say. The second re was quelled at about 11:40 p.m. on 7 April. And at 2:09 a.m. on 8 April, the same oil tank caught re again. A fourth tank, holding about 1500 m.t. of hydrocarbon liquid, caught re and exploded again, the re department of Zhangzhou says (available at Reuters news and Firenews 2015) (Fig. 1).
Paraxylene is a raw material used in the production of PTA and PET which are important raw materials for the textile, tyre and bottling industry. Dragon Aromatics, owned by Xianglu Group, a Taiwanese petrochemical group, is one of the largest independently run PX producers in China. The Dragon Aromatics petrochemical plant is located in the port of Gulei, Zhangpu County, which is in the southernmost Fujian province. Since 2015, the companys name contains Zhangzhou, the main city of the prefecture. Gulei, a peninsula formed by the Zhang River estuary at the Taiwan Strait of the Pacic Ocean, was once famous for carrot production and used to be production bases for owers and fruits. The Gulei peninsula was once very beautiful (available at Wikipedia 2015) (Figs. 2, 3).
& G. L. Liang [email protected]
1 Key Laboratory of Coastal Disaster and Defence, Ministry of Education, Hohai University,
Nanjing 210098, China
2 College of Harbor, Coastal, and Offshore Engineering, Hohai University, Nanjing 210098, China
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