Germany: one dead and four missing in the explosion at a waste management site

An employee has died and four others are missing after the explosion on Tuesday in Leverkusen, western Germany, at a waste treatment site, which also left 16 staff injured, the staff said. business manager. "We are deeply moved by this tragic accident and the death of an employee," Currenta management said in a statement.

 Residents of the German city of Leverkusen (west) were asked to remain sealed on Tuesday after an explosion of unknown origin at a waste treatment site that left two seriously injured and resulted in significant smoke development.

The explosion, followed by a localized fire, occurred around 9:40 am local (07:40 GMT), injuring "several employees, at least two of them seriously," said in a statement the company Currenta, which manages the site including a waste storage center and an incinerator. 

"Extreme danger"

"The inhabitants of Leverkusen are asked to go to closed rooms, turn off the air conditioning and, as a precaution, keep windows and doors closed," adds the company, a former subsidiary of the chemicals giant Bayer. The event was classified as "extreme danger" by the national disaster alert application Nina. The storage site and the incineration plant are located on the edge of an industrial park bringing together companies in the chemical sector, one of the largest of its kind in Europe, on the outskirts of Leverkusen (North Rhine -Westphalia). Leverkusen has a little over 160,000 inhabitants and is located about twenty kilometers from Cologne.

The call for preventive insulation in the face of the release of smoke was also relayed by the police and local authorities. The air quality measurements show that there was "no danger" for the population of Cologne, the firefighters of this metropolis of more than one million inhabitants said on Twitter. The Cologne police mentioned on their twitter account "extensive damage" and indicated that several sections of the motorway had been closed.