"IT sounded," said Guo Jianfu, who was asleep in a workers' dormitory at the time, "like the start of a war. I thought maybe Japan was bombing our port." Just before midnight on August 12th a pair of huge explosions in an industrial warehouse tore through Tianjin, a major city in north-east China, killing at least 44 people and injuring over 400. A swathe of the industrial zone was devastated, with shipping containers strewn about like toys. Residential areas also suffered extensive damage. On the China Earthquake Administration's seismograph, the biggest blast registered a magnitude of 2.9.
Disasters, man-made or natural, are dangerous to authoritarian governments since public distress can turn to public anger. Social media add to the problems since they make it harder for governments to hush up the scale of damage or the inadequacies of the response.
The Tianjin explosions showed new rules of disaster management in action. With a few exceptions, the authorities allowed reporters access and have so far done little to censor coverage. Tweets were not blocked, even those criticising the response: why, asked one, were firemen allowed into a burning warehouse full of...Continue reading
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