My beautiful lounge after the explosion

Working in China Had Some Scary Moments

I was asked by an old boss if I could head to China to troubleshoot some contractual problems on a project there, which culminated in my staying for 2 years and becoming their Country Manager based in Tianjin.

I was thoroughly enjoying my time in China, I had found a couple of local hangouts for the weekends or evenings and even ended up playing my blues harp and singing in a band at “The Guitar Cabin,” which had become my favorite place to unwind.

On the 12th of August 2015, we got a call from London to tell me that I was booked to attend a meeting the following day in Qingdao, a 6-hour train ride away, my boss was already in the air on his way there. Our local driver collected me from the port construction zone and ran me the 30 minutes journey back to where my nice designer apartment was situated, close to the football stadium and shopping area.

My apartment was on the 21st floor of a tower block, I had settled in there a couple of months previous and was very comfortable there. It had a desk and office area in the lounge where I often sat until midnight working on reports or official emails. I could write, play music, or even watch some TV, I was self-sufficient, with a supermarket a short walk away for most of my needs. On the day in question, I packed a lightweight wheelie bag with enough clothes for only a couple of days and our driver delivered me to the Tianjin Railway Station in time for the bullet train to Qingdao.

I got to my hotel in Qingdao that evening, showered, and found the Chinese restaurant on the first floor where my boss, who was flying in from London had arranged to meet me. We enjoyed the local food, with a couple of Tsing Tao beers and went to bed early to be ready for the meeting arranged for the following morning.

At about 02.00 am I was awakened with a couple of incoming text messages from my friend back in the UK, who asked if I was ok, as he had seen a CNN report on tv news about a big explosion in Tianjin. I just texted back that I was ok and in Qingdao, thought nothing much more about it, and went back to sleep. At around 06.30 am my boss rang from his room and also mentioned the explosion, that he had taken a call from one of our men explaining that they had walked for miles along with many others to evacuate their apartment area, close to mine. Many people were on the road out to the local hospital treading through broken glass and debris on the way. Every window for up to 6 km from the explosion had been blown in and then sucked back out in the implosion that followed. Our apartments were about 2 km from the epicenter of the explosion at a chemical storage depot across the highway.

We had to rush back to Tianjin, and I had to take command of my staff, 2 of whom had received stitches because of flying glass. We holed up in a hotel paid for by our client and it wasn’t for another 5 days that the military cordon around our apartment blocks allowed us back to collect our belongings. That climb up 21 flights of stairs was hard enough, carefully treading over broken shards on the fire escape route, no elevators were in service because of the explosion.

The extent of the damage was frightening, we checked out other apartments on the way up, where their front doors had been blown off the hinges, glass was everywhere, furniture and fittings ripped to pieces, with small shrapnel embedded in the walls. My apartment was no different, apart from the fact that every single window was blown in completely and some out into the air, still in their frames, across from where I sat most nights. Shrapnel was everywhere, curtains ripped, and my bathroom door was blown in half. The large picture window of my lounge, some 10 feet by 8 feet, was completely gone, including the frame, sucked out in the blast. If I had been in there I probably would have been cut to pieces by flying glass and windows in their frames, either flying across my beds or I may have been sucked out through that same picture window onto the concrete 21 floors below.

The whole of the district we lived in at the time was shut down and cordoned off by the military who were watching out for looters and keeping the foreign press at bay.

My loyal staff of Indian engineers helped me pack my bags, and sort through the debris and we left that apartment block never to return. We found another apartment nearer the center of town where I managed to stay without incident for over a year. I had certainly been saved by that sudden request to go to Qingdao.