One dead as explosion hits German chemicals site

One person has been killed and four others are missing after an explosion rocked an industrial park housing several chemical companies in Germany’s western city of Leverkusen, agencies report.

Tuesday’s explosion at the waste management facility of the Chempark site, which houses chemical companies including Bayer and Lanxess, took place shortly before 10am local time (08:00 GMT).

It sent a large black cloud into the air and sparked a fire, though the blaze was later extinguished.

More than 30 companies operate at the Chempark site, which is located very close to the banks of the Rhine river, according to its website. Bayer and Lanxess in 2019 sold Chempark operator Currenta to Macquarie Infrastructure and Real Assets for an enterprise value of 3.5 billion euros ($4.12bn).

The city of Leverkusen said in a statement that the blast occurred in storage tanks for solvents. It said 16 people were injured, four of them seriously.

“We are deeply concerned about this tragic accident and the death of our employee,” the head of Chempark, Lars Friedrich, said in a written statement.

It took firefighters almost four hours to extinguish the fire that took hold after the blast.

Germany’s Federal Office for Civil Protection and Disaster Assistance initially classified the incident as “an extreme threat” and urged people to shelter inside, with windows and doors closed.

However, the Cologne fire department tweeted that measurements of the air’s pollution “do not show any kind of abnormality.”

They said the smoke had gone down but that they would continue to measure the air for toxins.

Police in nearby Cologne, which is Germany’s fourth biggest city, said a large number of officers, firefighters, helicopters and ambulances from across the region had been deployed to the scene.

They asked all residents to stay inside and warned people from outside of Leverkusen to avoid the region. They also shut down several nearby motorways.

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