Death toll rises to 85 following Chinese explosions

He also described regaining consciousness and seeing what he described as fire rain falling from the sky.

China will launch a nationwide inspection of businesses engaged in unsafe chemicals and explosives after the explosions in Tianjin which killed at least 56 people, including 21 firefighters, the State Council said on Friday.

According to The Associated Press, the Tianjin government has put the death toll to 50 after the huge, fiery blasts at a port warehouse for hazardous chemicals.

The explosions produced so much heat that weather satellites in high orbit picked them up from 36,000km above the ground.

The toll included at least 21 firefighters among the more than 1,000 sent to the disaster.

Chinese authorities on Friday also defended firefighters who initially hosed water on a chemical fire in the warehouse, a response foreign experts said could have contributed to causing the explosions, Reuters reported. An additional 13 firefighters are missing, officials said.

“We have gone to each and every hospital by ourselves and not found them”, said Wang Baoxia, whose elder brother is missing. With about 6,000 Tianjin residents forced from their homes and countless others unsure whether it was safe to breathe the air, government officials have struggled to reassure the public there was little danger. “I ran. I grabbed my child and my wife and ran”.

Numerous fire trucks seen at the site hours after the blasts were using a kind of firefighting foam.

The warehouse that caused the explosion is owned by the Tanjin Dongjiang Port Rui Hai global company and its officers have been placed under arrest.

According to local Chinese media reports based on an interview with a single warehouse employee, some 700 tons of sodium cyanide were stored at the facility. The warehouse leveled in the blast was roughly five times the size of a large warehouse.

Ruihai worldwide Logistics had reportedly been storing chemicals including sodium cyanide, toluene diisocyanate, ammonium nitrate, potassium nitrate and calcium carbide.

Officials said Zhou had no recollection of when he reached the scene, and it was not clear whether he was among the first responders to the site who were caught up in the giant blasts, or if he arrived some time later. However, the deputy head of the propaganda wing of China’s fire department, Lei Jinde, said the firefighters should not be blamed.

Others questioned reporting in China’s state-controlled media, and the stress on rescue efforts when disaster strikes.

Xinhua reported that Tianjin environmental bureau chief Wen Wurui announced that the air quality in the city’s port, where the blast occurred, appears to be normal.