This is the miracle moment a hero firefighter was pulled from the rubble of the Tianjin explosion after being trapped for 32 hours.
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At least 21 firefighters are among the dead, with another 721 people injured after the blasts at a warehouse storing hazardous materials. One additional survivor was found Saturday.
Reports by the Beijing News and other mainstream Chinese media outlets that have since been deleted online said about 700 tons of sodium cyanide were stored in the warehouse, located about 110 kilometres south-west of Beijing.
Ltd, which state media said housed “dangerous chemicals“.
Authorities are yet to determine the full list of chemicals on site. But the contamination was no longer detected later Saturday and there was no obvious impact on anybody in the area, the report said.
Firefighters initially responded to a blaze at the warehouse and many of them were apparently killed by a series of explosions triggered 40 minutes after the fire was reported. Fresh fires broke out worsening the situation.
Tianjin is the 10th largest port in the world by container volume and the seventh largest in China, according to the World Shipping Council, moving more containers than the ports of Rotterdam, Hamburg and Los Angeles. His identity was not immediately known. Fooage showed the 56-year-old man being carried out on a sketcher by a group of soldiers wearing gas masks. Wang Lianqing, a senior engineer from environmental science academy in Tianjin, said that sodium cyanide was a water-soluble substance, but that site has been sealed and normal rain would not produce any risky reactions.
Chinese police are clearing everyone within three miles of a fire in the port city of Tianjin over fears of chemical poisoning.
Police and military staff are deployed at checkpoints leading to the explosion site, and helicopters are hovering above.
Relatives of some of the 95 people missing stormed an official news conference demanding to know the whereabouts of their loved ones. “We couldn’t contact him”. Tianjin authorities later said 12 firefighters were among the 44 killed.
“We were never notified that the warehouses were modified to handle unsafe goods”, a spokesman for developer China Vanke Co. said in an email. “He’s just turned 18”. Investigations are to find out the cause of the explosions, officials said. “Forces from all sides are searching for the missing firefighters”, he added. One firefighter was rescued from the ruins of the warehouse early Friday.
“There was no chance to escape, and that’s why the casualties were so severe”, he said. Zhou had massive injuries, including burns and leg cuts.
From his hospital bed, Zhou told CCTV the fire was spreading out of control.
“I was knocked onto the ground at the first blast“, recalled Zhou.
“I asked my in-laws to take my daughter home”. They could prove hazardous to residents by exposure through air or via soil or water pollution if seeped underground.
“We felt so upset after we heard about the explosion”.
Media in China have reported that one of the warehouses that was destroyed may have stored a number of toxic chemicals, including sodium cyanide and toluene diisocyanate, said to be “extremely toxic” even after short-term exposure to humans.
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Government officials, acutely aware of concerns over the fire, have sought to suppress unauthorized information.
