Twelve firefighters were among the dead, China’s official Xinhua news agency said as it reported a doubling of the death toll.
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Meanwhile, 721 others were hospitalized, including 25 critically wounded and 33 in serious condition, the rescue headquarters said.
At least three residential buildings stood within one kilometer from the site of the deadly explosions in the port city of Tianjin, despite State Council limits on protective zoning for the storage of hazardous materials. Some chemical, as well as, risky goods were stored there in the city where the port is there, according to the state media. “We are extremely anxious”, she said.
Chemical safety experts said calcium carbide reacts with water to create acetylene, a highly explosive gas, and an explosion could be caused if the firefighters had sprayed the calcium carbide with water.
Authorities have not said what caused the explosions, saying only that they originated at the warehouse owned by Ruihai worldwide Logistics.
“It was incredible. We didn’t know what was happening”. “At that point no one knew, it wasn’t that the fire fighters were stupid”, Lei said, adding that it was a large warehouse and they didn’t know the exact location of the calcium carbide. Among the victims were twelve firefighters, who showed up early to the scene. The air had a metallic chemical smell, and there was fear that rains mixed the chemicals could set off more explosions.
But moments later, he witnesses the first of two massive blasts he would later describe as being like “a small nuclear bomb”. Ammonium nitrate may also have been present.
Authorities are yet to determine the full list of chemicals on site. The blasts were spotted from space by satellites, and were picked up by seismometers which registered them as a magnitude 2 to 3 natural disaster. The explosions, which happened at a warehouse full of chemicals, left destruction throughout the area.
By late Thursday, a total of 6,000 residents had been relocated to 10 nearby schools after their homes were damaged by the blast waves.
Guo cited damage to the company’s office and major discrepancies between the accounts of company management and customs records as a reason they have not been able to identify the chemicals, China.org reported.
The People’s Daily, the Communist Party mouthpiece, said that the facility “clearly violated” safety regulations.
The Tianjin Port Group Company said dozens of its employees remained unaccounted for, according to Xinhua. The entire complex was evacuated and falls within a 1- to 2-kilometre zone around the blast site that has been cordoned off by police.
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Tianjin is a city of about 15 million people in northeast China, about 100 miles outside Beijing.
