The environmental group Greenpeace, citing a local monitoring station, said it believed other dangerous chemicals stored at the site included toluene diisocyanate and calcium carbide.
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Armed police were carrying out the evacuation after highly poisonous sodium cyanide was found at the site, the Beijing News said, as the blaze intensified dramatically with several blasts reportedly heard.
The authorities are considering whether to send teams into the core of the blast site on Friday to remove remaining hazardous materials in the area, state television said.
The death toll for the initial explosions at the site has now risen to 85, including 21 firefighters, as reported by Xinhua News.
A 19-year-old firefighter has been rescued after spending about 32 hours in the rubble left after devastating blasts in Chinese port city of Tianjin.
Zhou Tian, the head of Tianjin Fire Department, said: “Many types of different materials with different characteristics are mixed together and could at any time result in a chemical reaction or explosion”. “At that point no one knew, it wasn’t that the fire fighters were stupid”, he said, stressing that the fire they first responded to was in a large warehouse and they didn’t know the exact location of the calcium carbide, which forms flammable gas when it comes into contact with water.
Wen Wurui, Tianjin’s environment protection chief, said Thursday that some chemical levels in the area were higher than normal but that they wouldn’t be unsafe to humans unless someone is exposed to them for long periods.
Officials have faced questions about whether the firefighters inadvertently sparked the explosion by using water around volatile chemicals and why the hazardous chemicals warehouse was so close to residential buildings and other critical infrastructure.
About a dozen family members of missing firefighters tried to storm a news conference, angry at a lack of information about their loved ones.
Zhou said further firefighting efforts must go slowly because of the potentially complex mix of chemicals at the site.
Zhou was one of the first firefighters to get to the warehouse, according to the officials.
Chinese authorities have not produced a complete list of inventory from the exploded warehouse, which is owned and operated by Tianjin Dongjiang Port Ruihai international Logistics.
The blasts have injured over 700 people so far.
“We have gone to each and every hospital by ourselves and not found them”, said Wang Baoxia, whose elder brother is missing.
French carmaker Renault said its warehouse at the port sustained severe damage and an early estimate showed nearly 1,500 of its cars there were burned.
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“Nobody has told us anything, we’re in the dark, there is no news at all”, screamed one middle-aged woman, as she was dragged away by security personnel.
