The air at the site still smelt bad and rescue workers were issued with upgraded facemasks to deal with toxic fumes.
Advertisement
Flames at the warehouse appeared Friday to be largely extinguished but residents anxious about lingering contamination. “They were caught off guard, so the casualties are grave”, Zhou said.
More than 6,000 local people have been forced to leave their homes and are now staying in temporary shelters. The explosions, which happened at a warehouse full of chemicals, left destruction throughout the area. Materials were kept there briefly when they arrived at the port and before they were transported elsewhere.
Most of the port was destroyed along with the new cars it was storing.
What is the environmental toll?
Chinese firefighter Zhou Ti is treated in Taida Hospital in north China’s Tianjin municipality Friday, August 14, 2015.
Authorities on Saturday pulled out one survivor from a shipping container, the state broadcaster CCTV said. “I’m really scared, but I don’t even know what to be scared of, the government hasn’t said anything, nothing about what we should do to keep our families safe from the chemicals”, Liu Zongguang, 50, told AFP news agency in Tianjin.
Fire officials say hazardous chemicals stored at the warehouse were ignited by fire. The cause of the fire has yet to be determined.
Angry relatives of missing firefighters stormed a government news conference to demand information on their loved ones more than two days after the disaster.
Firefighters at the scene told the Beijing Times it might be possible to bring the fires under control by Thursday evening. It was necessary to cool the blaze, he said, according to a CNN translation.
“We are concerned that certain chemicals will continue to pose a risk to the residents of Tianjin“, the environmental group Greenpeace said. The facility was also licensed to handle calcium carbide, a unsafe compound known to release flammable gases when mixed with water.
Authorities have given no reason for the fire, or how it led to the explosions.
Chinese authorities propose to launch a nationwide examination of risky chemicals and explosives in the wake of the deadly explosions.
How many lives did the explosions claim? There were 21 firefighters among the dead, the highest so far in China’s recent history. Several news agencies have tried to contact the company through emails, but they have not answered.
Staff of a maternity hospital wait to provide help to injured people being housed at a school near the site of an explosion, Aug.13, 2015, in Tianjin, in northern China.
The district in which the warehouse was located is thinly populated.
Wednesday’s blasts, which came roughly 30 seconds apart, sent shockwaves through apartment blocks kilometres away in the port city of 15 million people.
Advertisement
The cause of the blasts was unknown but industrial accidents are not uncommon in China following three decades of breakneck economic growth.
