Investigators in the western German town of Ludwigshafen are still trying to determine the cause of the explosion at the BASF chemical plant. Two people were killed, one remains missing and six were severely injured.
Following the severe explosion at the BASF chemical plant in Ludwigshafen on Monday, German authorities continued on Tuesday to investigate the cause of the blast which killed at least two people. Officials said terrorism has been ruled out.
At a press conference on Tuesday afternoon, Ludwigshafen fire service chief Peter Friedrich said fire services had not yet been able to reach the site of the accident.
"There's still a thick layer of foam on the pipeline where the explosion happened," Friedrich said, adding that the pipes would have to cool down before the site can be accessed.
Employees still missing
The two people known to have died in the accident were both members of BASF's own fire brigade.
One person, thought also to be a member of the fire service, was still unaccounted for on Tuesday, while another six people remained in intensive care. Fire Chief Friedrich said the missing person is believed to be in the harbor. Divers, however, hadn't yet been able to enter the waters. A second person, who earlier in the day had also been reported as missing, has since been identified at a local hospital where they were receiving treatment.
The explosion and fire on Monday occurred at around 11:30 a.m. local time (0930 UTC) at a river harbor, used to unload flammable liquids and liquid gas.
It took firefighters 10 hours to extinguish the resulting blaze. During the incident, BASF was forced to shut down 20 facilities, including two steam crackers, which produce basic hydrocarbon chemicals used to manufacture a wide range of plastics and other chemicals.
Explosion at BASF chemical plant
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Following the explosion, a pipeline that was undergoing repairs began spewing soot, BASF plant manager Uwe Liebelt told reporters. Several witnesses also posted videos on social media in which huge flames and plumes of thick black smoke were seen billowing from the plant.
The city of Ludwigshafen reported on Twitter that residents located near the plant were complaining of "respiratory irritation."
BASF confirmed at Tuesday's press conference that the substances that burned in the subsequent blaze included ethylene - used in producing solvents and insulation - and propylene, used in producing car paint and adhesives.
A day on since the explosion, residents in Ludwigshafen and the nearby city of Mannheim were told by authorities to continue to keep all doors and windows closed. No increases of harmful substances had been reported, however.
Damge levels unclear
As a safety precaution, BASF also shut down 14 other production plants on Monday and erected water barriers between the northern inland port and the Rhine.
The economic consequences and the damage levels remain unclear.
The incident on Monday came just two years after Ludwigshafen was shaken by a devastating gas explosion, close to the BASF chemical plant. Gas transport company Gascade had been digging around a buried pipeline at the time of the blast. One excavation worker was killed and 20 other people were injured. Nearby houses and trees were burned to charcoal, leaving an entire neighborhood devastated.
Authorities in Ludwigshafen have shared a telephone hotline for those directly affected by Monday's explosion: +49 62 157 086 000.
Chemical industry giant BASF turns 150
Foundation, fusion, destruction, re-foundation - BASF's corporate history, like that of the nation from which it emerged, has had periods of genius and periods of deep darkness. Its mission now: Engineering the future.
Image: BASF SE
A global corporate player
There's no corporation in the chemical industry that has bigger revenues or a larger market cap than BASF. Sales in 2014 amounted to a hefty 74.3 billion euros ($79.9 billion). The company has 113,000 employees in more than 80 countries. The corporate HQ is in western Germany at Ludwigshafen am Rhein (pictured). BASF has more than 390 production sites around the world.
Image: picture alliance/Fotoagentur Kunz
A business built on byproducts
BASF was founded on April 6, 1865, by Friedrich Engelhorn, under the name of Badische Anilin- und Sodafabrik (later BASF). Engelhorn had already been running a factory for several years that supplied the city of Mannheim with gas for its street lamps. A byproduct was coal tar. Engelhorn decided to found BASF to produce tar-based and aniline dyes for the textile industry.
Image: BASF SE
Materials for making fertilizer and gunpowder
Since the turn of the 20th century, thanks to R&D by German chemists Fritz Haber und Carl Bosch, it has been possible to produce ammonia on an industrial scale. That's a key ingredient for both fertilizer and explosives. During the first world war, BASF produced explosives, gunpowder, and poison gas for the German military.
Image: picture-alliance/dpa/Philipp Schulze
Chemical industry consolidation
The European economy pace of recovery after the first world war was rather slow. The German chemical industry's main firms had already collaborated loosely since 1916, in support of the German war effort. In 1925, BASF fused with five other firms, including Hoechst and Bayer, to form I.G. Farbenindustrie Aktiengesellschaft (I.G. Farben). Pictured: I.G. Farben's then-HQ in Frankfurt (Main).
Image: picture-alliance/dpa
Complicity in making weapons of mass destruction
I.G. Farben collaborated with the Nazi regime. The company made extensive use of forced labor, including concentration camp prisoners. Pictured: The I.G. Farben facility at Auschwitz-Monowitz, where Zyklon B poison gas was produced. The gas was originally meant to serve as an insecticide, but the Nazis ended up using it in the death camps to murder millions of human beings.
Image: picture-alliance/dpa
BASF in ruins
Allied troops occupied I.G. Farben's Ludwighafen factory in March 1945. It had already been largely destroyed by aerial bombing. In the same year, the four occupying powers confiscated the company's entire capital stock. In the Soviet occupation zone, the company's factories were dismantled and shipped East, or nationalized. In November 1945, the Allied control council dissolved I.G. Farben.
Image: picture-alliance/dpa
Resurrection
On January 30, 1952, eleven companies were created out of the ruined legacy of I.G. Farben, among them several future major-league players: Agfa, Bayer AG, Hoechst AG, and BASF. Initially, BASF focused mostly on making plastics. Over the decades that followed, BASF broadened its product range and built more and more production facilities around the world. It became a global company.
Image: dapd
An all-round chemical industry player
BASF's product range is huge: Paints and varnishes, styrofoam, insulation materials, medicines, light stabilizers, vehicle battery materials, adhesives and more. The company invests heavily in research - for example in organic solar cells (pictured). The company's 2014 research budget was around 1.8 billion euros.
Image: BASF SE
Chemicals sales
A large fraction of BASF's sales consist of chemicals and production materials for other industries, including construction, pharmaceutical, textile, and automobile industries. BASF materials used in the renovation of London's Underground (pictured), for example, include tunnel boring machines, robotic machines for rock-wall support construction, spray concrete and fire protection coatings.
Image: BASF SE
Surprising sidelines
Public awareness of BASF's wide range of businesses is limited. Few people know, for example, that BASF is not only the world's biggest chemical industry company, but also one of Germany's biggest wine sellers. The company sold about 900,000 bottles in 2013 alone. The cellars of the wine sales subsidiary, more than 100 years old, feature more than 2,000 different wines.
