CNN news 2015-08-23 加文本

cnn news 2015-08-23

Right now, several thousand people are on the ground here in Tianjin, working to clean up the chemical disaster that is unfolding here. And you can see some of the crews right here behind me. They actually had to throw out the hazmat suits that they were wearing and they just changed into these new yellow suits because they say they were contaminated with sodium cyanide. They have detected and collected that deadly toxin and they've also detected other dangerous chemicals in this area.

We are about a half a mile from the blast site and of course the concentrations only get higher as you get closer. The chemicals that they found, they have deposited in this truck. You can see they have those storage containers to secure it safely and ship it to an area where it can be contained and away from the public. Because keep in mind, we are standing right now, just across the street from thousands of apartments where people are supposed to be moving in, in less than two months.

A state reporter, who tagged along with these hazardous material crews actually travelled to the center of the blast site, which remains heavily restricted, so there's not any access to the general public. But this reporter was embedded with the crews. And as they were getting closer to the center of the blast site, the levels of sodium cyanide, which can be lethal in small doses and also the levels of neurotoxins actually exceeded the measuring capacity of their testing meters. That shows you just how heavily concentrated these chemicals are.

And it's made worse on the ground here by the fact that it has been raining today. And so the rain, while it clears some of the pollution in the air, it makes things much more complicated on the ground. Because the water can actually interact with the chemicals that these folks here, these hazmat workers here are working to detect.

The clean-up effort continues and so does the process of identifying the bodies. The death toll is holding steady and more and more families are learning in fact, that, getting the confirmation that their loved ones were killed in this disaster a full week ago. But there is a search underway for the missing. And there are dozens missing a full week after this explosion and the ensuing environmental disaster that this city and this country is still coming to terms with.

Will Ripley, cnn, Tianjin, China.