Time.news – An immense cloud of pitch-colored smoke on the Leverkusen sky followed by a detonation so strong that it was recorded 40 kilometers away. One dead, 31 injured, four missing and an appeal to the population: stay at home, with windows and doors closed. Because the authorities have not yet been able to establish whether dangerous substances have been released into the air, and if so, in what size.
It is the first balance of the explosion that tore through the Chempark chemical park a Leverkusen, in North-Rhine Westphalia, where the headquarters of the pharmaceutical giant Bayer is also based.
“Is Leverkusen our Chernobyl?”, A local resident asks alarmed on Twitter, while the whole area is armored by numerous units of firefighters, police and rescuers, while vehicles are still at work on site. air measurement.
According to the manager of the chemical park, the explosion and subsequent fire occurred around 9.40 am in the housing of the tanks at the waste management center of the plant. Yet the causes of the explosion are still unclear while the Federal Office for Civil Protection classifies the event as “extreme danger”.
According to the broadcaster WDR, the explosion shook the entire area of the city, while the police closed several motorway accesses around the chemical park. The thunder of the explosion was heard up to ten kilometers away. An investigation into the causes of the accident has not yet been possible, given that containment operations are still underway.
The main problem – reports the director of the Chempark Lars Friedrich in a first excited press conference – is that it has not yet been possible to clarify whether and how many substances have been released in the sky: “I cannot exclude anything”, repeats Friedrich, “the declaration of risk has not yet been withdrawn, the people who live in the surrounding area are still required to comply with the utmost caution ”.
The head of the park, however, confirmed that the tanks of chlorinated solvents have caught fire, adding however that the extinguishing water “has not leaked from the plant”. According to the Chempark manager’s estimates, the affected reservoirs were found by 600 thousand to 900 thousand liters of solvents.
However, the authorities assure that in the early afternoon the situation in the tank farm was under control and that currently there is no longer “an acute situation of danger”. After the detonation, the solvent tank fleet continued to burn for hours, as extinguishing operations could not be carried out until one of the plant’s electrical lines was separated.
In addition to asking residents to leave doors and windows closed and to stop consuming fruit and vegetables from their own gardens, all playgrounds in the Buerrig and Opladen districts have been closed. Mayor Uwe Richrath does not hide his anguish: “It is a tragic day for our city”, he repeats in front of journalists.
Leverkusen, with its 167,000 inhabitants, has a history closely linked to chemistry, and what’s more, just two weeks ago it was hit, albeit only partially, by the catastrophic floods that brought the Rhineland to its knees.
Again the fear came from the sky, this time in the form of an immense black cloud: the shock caused by the explosion was so strong that it was recorded by several stations of the North Rhine Westphalia geological service, down to the Hespertal , about 40 kilometers away from Leverkusen.
The society Currenta is the manager of Chempark, one of the largest chemical sites in Europe. More than 70 companies are located here, including groups Dax Covestro e Bayer O Lanxess e Liquid air.
In 2019, Bayer and Lanxess had sold their shares in Currenta, with approximately 3,300 employees, to an infrastructure investment firm belonging to the Australian bank Macquarie Group.
“We are deeply troubled by this tragic accident and the death of one of our collaborators,” added director Lars Friedrich. “And we still hope to find the four missing people.”
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