Chinese media is reported a second wave of explosions has rocked the city of Tianjin Saturday.
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The death toll from a massive fire and explosions in Tianjin, China, has jumped to 85, officials said.
The Communist Party’s official newspaper, “The People’s Daily”, said the facility’s construction had “clearly violated” safety rules, which require warehouses storing hazardous materials to be located at least one kilometer (0.6 miles) away from other public buildings and roads.
There have also been reports that firefighters who were first on the scene on Wednesday may have exacerbated the situation by attempting to douse the chemical fires with water.
The company said on its website, before it became inaccessible late Thursday, that it stored toxic chemicals, including sodium cyanide and toluene diisocyanate, as well as compressed natural gas, flammable liquids and flammable solids.
Other dangerous chemicals stored there likely included potassium nitrate and ammonium nitrate, Xinhua said.
China has launched a nationwide inspection of dangerous chemicals and explosives, with The State Council – the country’s equivalent of the cabinet, saying the country must learn a “profound” lesson from the explosions.
Xinhua said several containers in the warehouse caught fire before the explosions.
Some “big Vs”, or popular verified bloggers, had made “irresponsible” comments about the blasts, such as comparing them to the atomic bombs dropped on Japan during the Second World War, it added.
The blasts were also visible from space – a Chinese agency released satellite photos of the area with the explosions showing as white spot. A fire is what caused the explosions, but the cause of the fire has not yet been determined.
Fire department official Lei Jinde said: “We knew there was calcium carbide inside but we didn’t know whether it had already exploded”.
As for immediate impact on the plastics industry, an analyst from SCI international predicts supply disruptions of propylene, TDI and propylene oxide – a building block for polyurethane, as warehouses in the port currently ceased handling of hazardous chemicals, according to an Aastocks.com report.
“Many types of different materials with different characteristics are mixed together and could at any time result in a chemical reaction or explosion“, he said.
Police confirmed the presence of the chemical, fatal when ingested or inhaled, “roughly east of the blast site”, the state-run Beijing News said.
More than 1,000 firefighters have been trying to deal with the remaining blazes, and firefighter Liu Xiaojing said he lost consciousness as he battled the inferno. About 720 people were hospitalized, including 25 critically wounded and 33 in serious condition, the news agency said.
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Operations at the Deere factory in Tianjin are temporarily suspended.
