An overnight explosion at an illegal waste dump in Tainan injured residents and firefighters, and investigators now say the man behind it had no license to handle waste at all.

• Aluminum-magnesium alloy scrap and waste oil piled on an empty lot in Tainan's Annan District caught fire and blew up before dawn, spreading to eight nearby homes.
• Ten residents and three firefighters were hurt and taken to hospital.
• The operator, surnamed Wang, held no waste-handling permits; another man is suspected of brokering the land, and it is unclear whether the landowner knew.
• Wang also runs a company in Kaohsiung, so environmental officials there have been asked to check for other illegal dump sites.
• The waste was industrial and partly hazardous; a national chemical response team was sent in to test the air around the site.

Outlook: Prosecutors are weighing charges that carry one to five years in prison, and the cleanup order will follow the fire investigation.