My Google Map Blog

There has been an imagery update in Google Earth and it includes a DigitalGlobe image captured on August 22nd, 2015, of Tianjin China. It shows the crater and other damage from the series of explosions that rocked the port on August 12th.

Apparently the explosions themselves were spotted by a Japanese weather satellite, as was the cloud of smoke.

For a satellite image captured by Google’s Skybox Imaging and some ground level photographs see this article. The original Skybox image was released by Google Crisis Response here, including a KML file showing before and after imagery.

Google usually releases imagery in batches, so there is probably other new imagery around the world. However, it is not yet in historical imagery, so we cannot find it easily. New imagery usually only gets added to historical imagery a week or so after it is added to Google Earth.

We also had a look at this list of explosions found on Wikipedia and tracked down some of them in Google Earth imagery. To see them and the Tianjin crater in Google Earth download this KML file.

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