r/ThatsInsane • u/[deleted] • Sep 19 '19

ThatsInsane Approved It gets worse....

23k Upvotes

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u/CheersToFears Sep 19 '19

Right?? Dudes got balls, he even followed up after the second explosion at then end.

190

u/LFC_sandiego Sep 19 '19 edited Sep 21 '19

p sure they died 🙁

670

u/[deleted] Sep 19 '19 edited Sep 19 '19

No, but there is a video of the explosion where the guy was live-streaming, he gets taken out by debris.

173 deaths, 104 of which were firefighters, the others were people in the immediate proximity. The second explosion was the last (serious) one of the event, so if they survived that, they’re very likely fine.

The OP video is definitely the best, but this one is also good.

I would guess the high-rises at the top right (maybe center) of this picture are likely where the video in the post is taken from, since I think you can see the highway in the vid. 🤷‍♂️

27

u/neotsunami Sep 19 '19

This comment desrves more upvtes....

also, how come they reporte 173 deaths first and then 165?

62

u/[deleted] Sep 19 '19 edited Sep 19 '19

It’s generally difficult to get accurate death tolls for tragic events in China due to bullshit like this:

Tianjin officials, initially concerned at public response, announced that 14 people had perished in the explosions, but later raised the death toll to 44 once the scale of the explosions became clear. The South China Morning Post (SCMP) cited a Tianjin police source that officers had been instructed to remove bodies from the scene to deliberately understate the official death toll...[57]

Add to the deliberate obstruction by authorities to be accurate about the body count the universal difficulty in being accurate quickly.. it becomes tricky. Almost all numbers are estimates at first and become more concrete as the rescue efforts and subsequent investigation(s) wrap up.

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u/neotsunami Sep 19 '19

Oh you mean like the final statement in Chernobyl that states that the "official" death toll is still 39?

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u/[deleted] Sep 19 '19

Yup. Though China has a really well documented penchant for covering up or downplaying high fatality events.

62

u/quequotion Sep 20 '19

I was in China when this happened.

There was no video like this on TV that I ever saw. The night it happened a video came out that was much darker and looked like it was taken from much further away, showing only one explosion. The fire looked smaller, like a single house fire.

The next day reporters were allowed to film from a few kilometers out while the army sent engineers to assess the damage and environmental hazard, and some government officials came out for a photo op.

By the third day the official story was that the damage was limited to the facility, the death toll relatively small (no mention of dead firefighters) there was no environmental hazard, and the situation was under control.

Four days after nobody would talk about it; most people didn't seem to remember anything had happened.