By Sui-Lee Wee and Adam Rose
TIANJIN, China, Aug 13 (Reuters) – Two huge explosions tore through an industrial area where toxic chemicals and gas were stored in the northeast Chinese port city of Tianjin, killing at least 50 people, including at least a dozen fire fighters, officials and state media said on Thursday.
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At least 700 people were injured, more than 71 seriously, the Tianjin government said on its Weibo microblog, and the official Xinhua news agency said two fires were still burning.
Wednesday night’s blasts, so large that they were seen by satellites in space, sent shockwaves through apartment blocks kilometres away in the port city of 15 million people. Internet videos showed fireballs shooting into the sky and the U.S. Geological Survey registered the blasts as seismic events.
Vast areas of the port – the 10th largest in the world – were devastated, crumpled shipping containers were thrown around like match sticks, hundreds of new cars were torched and port buildings left as burnt-out shells, Reuters witnesses said.
“I was sleeping when our windows and doors suddenly shook as we heard explosions outside. I first thought it was an earthquake,” Guan Xiang, who lives 7 km (4 miles) away from the explosion site, told Reuters by telephone.
Guan, 24, said he saw flames and a mushroom cloud in the sky as he and other residents scrambled to get out of the building.
Tianjin authorities said 12 firefighters were among the 44 killed.
The cause of the blasts was being investigated but Xinhua said several containers caught fire beforehand. Industrial accidents are not uncommon in China following three decades of breakneck economic growth. A blast at an auto parts factory in eastern China killed 75 people a year ago when a room filled with metal dust exploded.
The state-run Beijing News earlier cited Tianjin fire authorities as saying they had lost contact with 36 firefighters. By late afternoon, Xinhua reported 18 were missing, while 66 were among the hundreds of people being treated in nearby hospitals.
Xinhua said 1,000 firefighters and more than 140 fire engines were struggling to contain a blaze in a warehouse that held “dangerous goods”.
“The volatility of the goods means the fire is especially unpredictable and dangerous to approach,” Xinhua said.
Several fire trucks had been destroyed and nearby firefighters wept as they worked to extinguish flames, the Beijing News reported.
President Xi Jinping demanded that authorities “make full effort to rescue and treat the injured and ensure the safety of people and their property”.
Xi said in a statement carried by official media that those responsible should be “severely handled”.
City officials had met recently with companies to discuss tightening safety standards on the handling of dangerous chemicals. The Tianjin Administration of Work Safety posted a notice about the meeting with companies at the port on its website a week ago.
POTENTIALLY TOXIC SMOKE
Anxious residents rushed to hospitals to seek news about injured loved ones. Dozens of police guarded the entrance of the TEDA hospital, a Reuters witness said.
Pictures on Chinese media websites showed residents and workers, some bleeding, fleeing their homes. Xinhua said people had been hurt by broken glass and other flying debris. Authorities told reporters they expected the blasts to have forced 6,000 people from their homes by nightfall.
Grey clouds of smoke billowed above the blast site and several trucks carrying paramilitary police – wearing masks to protect them from potentially toxic smoke – headed to the area.
The blasts shattered windows in buildings and cars and knocked down walls in a 2-km radius around the site. Photographs on news websites showed burned-out cars inside a multi-storey car park at a logistics base at the port.
Video posted on YouTube from what appeared to be an apartment building some distance from the scene showed an initial blast followed by a second, much bigger, explosion. Shockwaves hit the building seconds later.
“Our building is shaking. Is this an atomic bomb?” said a frenzied voice inside. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YeXBME2YVQo)
Despite the devastation, the port was operating normally, a port official said. Tianjin port is the gateway to northern China’s industrial belt.
Xinhua said the explosions, the first equivalent to 3 tonnes of TNT and the second to 21 tonnes of TNT, ripped through a warehouse.
A team from the International Atomic Energy Agency’s Beijing environmental emergency response centre, as well as 214 Chinese military nuclear and biochemical materials specialists, had gone to Tianjin, the news agency said.
It identified the owner of the warehouse as Tianjin Dongjiang Port Ruihai International Logistics. The company’s website said it was a government-approved firm specialising in handling “dangerous goods”. Company officials could not immediately be reached for comment.
According to an assessment by government environmental inspectors published in 2014, the facility was designed to store several dangerous and toxic chemicals including butanone, an explosive industrial solvent, sodium cyanide and compressed natural gas.
CCTV said at least one person at a “relevant company” had been detained.
(Additional reporting by Joseph Campbell in TIANJIN, Kazunori Takada, Chen Yixin, Brenda Goh and Sue-Lin Wong in SHANGHAI, and Michael Martina, Jason Subler, Megha Rajagopalan and Judy Hua in BEIJING; Writing by Dean Yates; Editing by Paul Tait and Nick Macfie)
More drone footage shows the extent of the damage on the still smouldering site of the blasts.
We are going to wrap up this blog for now. Thanks for reading.
Updated
The US State department has offered its condolences.
Summary
Here’s what we know so far.
- At least 50 people have been killed and 701 injured after two explosions at a warehouse containing large quantities of dangerous chemicals in the port city of Tianjin. Of those wounded 71 are said to be suffering severe injuries.
- Fires were still smouldering almost 22 hours after the blasts while chemical experts assess the hazardous materials on site. The cause of the blasts is still not known. The warehouse is reported to have contained large quantities of the highly toxic chemical sodium cyanide. A team of 217 military toxic waste specialists have arrived in Tianjin.
- The explosions were so massive they could be seen from space, according to satellite photos released by the Japan meteorological agency. The force of the blast also prompted alarm at China’s National Earthquake Network.
- Thousands of people have been left homeless, with 6,000 people expected to spend the night in emergency shelters. Witnesses described residents near the site fleeing their homes – some dressed only in their underwear.
- The blasts occurred shortly before midnight local time (4pm GMT, 2am AEST). A shipment of so-far unidentified “dangerous goods” in a warehouse went up in flames, causing explosions so strong that they shook homes on the other side of the city and sent flaming debris arching over nearby high-rise buildings.
- Xi Jinping, the Chinese president, “urged all-out efforts to save the injured and minimize casualties”. Li Keqiang, the prime minister, gave orders for authorities “to intensify search and rescue”..
- The owners of the factory at the centre of the blasts – named as Tianjin Dongjiang Port Rui Hai International Logistics Co. Ltd – have been detained. The firm had flouted packaging standards two years ago according to inspection records.
- Authorities earlier said they had lost contact with a further 36 firefighters tackling the huge blazes. It is not clear if this includes the 12 who are confirmed to have died. Over 1,000 firefighters and 143 fire trucks were dispatched to the scene.
- Guardian reporter Fergus Ryan, who is in Tianjin, says smoke continues to billow across the city. He also reported a further small explosion and fires still ablaze, with damage to buildings and cars as far as 3km from the scene.
- Greenpeace has warned that chemicals involved in the blaze could pose an ongoing threat to Tianjin residents. Beijing has played down fears that a toxic fumes are heading for the Chinese capital.
New dash cam footage from a vehicle has emerged purporting to show the moment the explosions occurred. It shows people running for the cover of a security hut moments before the second blast lights up the street causing trees and lampposts to sway and setting debris flying.
The fire is now mostly under control but smoulder patches remain and local officials further efforts to put out flames have been suspended while chemical experts assess the hazardous materials on site, AP reports.
The owners of warehouse where the explosions occurred were found to have flouted packaging standards during a safety inspection two years ago, Reuters reports citing a safety bureau.
Here are images of the port area before and after the blasts.
Almost 21 hours after the blasts some of the fires are still smouldering, according to an update from the state news agency. Xinhua added that the cause of the blast is still not known.
Tom Phillips highlights an alarming report in the Beijing News which claims that the warehouse at the centre of the blasts wasstoring at least 700 tonnes of the poison sodium cyanide.
According to Center for Disease Control and Prevention this is a“highly toxic chemical asphyxiant” and exposure to it can be “rapidly fatal”.
The CDC guidance on how the emergency workers should respond to a leak of the chemical helps explain why Beijing sent a 217-strong team of “Nuclear, Biological and Chemical specialist to the scene (see earlier).
CNN has retracted a claim that its correspondent was ordered to stop reporting outside a hospital in Tianjin by the authorities.
A live broadcast of the incident showed reporter Will Ripley being forced to stop recording. A first CNN suggested Ripley was forced to stop broadcasting by officials before clarifying that it was friends and relatives of the victims that urged him to halt recording.
China’s state news agency Xinhua criticised CNN for “inaccurate” and insensitive reporting.
In an opinion piece it said:
The blasts prompted alarm at China’s National Earthquake Network, the BBC reports.
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