Wednesday night’s blasts, so large that they were seen by satellites in space, sent shock waves through apartment blocks kilometres away in the port city of 15 million people. “It’s that we’re anxious we may affect traffic or the rescue operations”.
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According to a statement from the headquarters in Tianjin, the injured firefighters were sent to a nearby hospital for treatment. An estimated 592 people have been injured, including 71 who are in critical condition.
“I thought it was an natural disaster!” said Liu Yue, a 25-year-old woman who lives about four kilometers away.
“I thought it was an quake, so I rushed downstairs without my shoes on”, said Tianjin resident Zhang Siyu, whose home is several kilometers from the blast site. In one logistics base, hundreds of brand-new VW Beetles were destroyed.
The injured were stretchered to the city hospitals where the authorities struggled to accommodate so many people.
Also damaged was the office building which houses the Chinese supercomputer Tianhe-1, one of the world’s fastest supercomputers. City residents shared similar fears on social media.
The China quake Administration said the first explosion registered a magnitude of 2.3, while a second explosion was even stronger, measuring 2.9 – the equivalent of 21 metric tons of TNT explosive.
Several thousand residents were moved to 10 schools after apartment buildings and homes were damaged.
State broadcaster CCTV said six battalions of firefighters had brought the ensuing fire under control, although it was still burning in the early hours of Thursday.
Among those hazardous materials contained at the site were some 700 tons of sodium cyanide, inside wooden boxes or iron barrels that each held about 50 kilograms, People’s Daily Online reported.
When the blast occurred, Zhang said, he just ran. They also have been publicly reticent about suspicions that firefighters may have sparked the explosions by spraying water on volatile chemicals.
The scene of destruction following back-to-back explosions in the Chinese port city of Tianjin continues to smolder as the death toll from Wednesday’s blasts topped 50.
Officials didn’t address the issue directly at a news conference Friday morning. The blaze was reportedly caused by an ammonia leak.
Pictures of huge fireballs engulfing buildings; thick smoke, glass fragments and debris on the ground, and people covered in blood went viral on Weibo.
Last August, 146 people were killed in an explosion at a vehicle parts factory in Kunshan, near Shanghai, while the year before, a pipeline explosion at state-owned oil refiner Sinopec’s facility in the eastern port of Qingdao killed 62.
There was no indication of what caused the disaster.
Fire officials say hazardous chemicals stored at the warehouse were ignited by fire.
Ruihai Logistics says on its website that it was established in 2011 and is an approved company for handling hazardous materials. There were reports that someone from the company had been detained. “They wanted all activity stopped”, said one of the officers on board the ship, adding it was unclear when reloading could restart.
The friend promised to do so and posted the messages on his micro blog, touching the hearts of netizens who forwarded them more than 150,000 times.
Tianjin is about 120km (75 miles) east of Beijing on the Bohai Sea and is one of the country’s major ports.
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But a civil society movement that had been scoring successes in the effort to clean up the environment and improve attention to safety issues, has been stifled under the new government of President Xi Jinping.
