Death toll rises to 50 in massive blasts at Chinese port

At least 50 people have been killed and hundreds have been injured after massive explosions in northeast China. Rescuers have pulled a survivor from an industrial zone about 32 hours after…

The cause of the explosions is being investigated and the company executives have been taken into custody.

Crushed cars, obliterated train stations and miles of nothingness are what have been left in the blast’s wake.

A witness said several trucks carrying paramilitary police – wearing masks to protect them from potentially toxic smoke – headed to the area.

It said it handled one million tons of cargo annually and has yearly revenues of at least $4.7m. The website of the logistics company became inaccessible Thursday. “We were not aware they were later transformed into warehouses for hazardous material”.

A building’s windows were damaged after the explosion. The blasts were spotted from space by satellites, and were picked up by seismometers which registered them as a magnitude 2 to 3 quake.

“It will have little impact to commodities prices and imports as other ports across China’s eastern coastline, especially those ports in nearby Shandong and Hebei provinces, could easily digest the capacity Tianjin may not be able to handle”, she said. After feeling a hum in my head, I immediately fell unconscious.

By the afternoon, six of the 17 firefighters killed by the blasts had been identified, Xinhua reported.

There was no indication of what caused the disaster in one of China’s busiest ports, and authorities tried to keep a tight rein over information by keeping reporters well away from the site.

The blast site sits in a giant logistics hub more than twice the size of Hong Kong.

Of 4 325 containers owned by Tianjin Dongjiang Port Ruihai global Logistics that were checked, five failed the inspection because packaging was sub-standard, the Tianjin Maritime Safety Administration said.

In a briefing on Thursday, the Tianjin government said four chemicals including a volatile organic compound, a chemical emitted from paints and pesticides, and toluene, which can damage the nervous system, were detected at the scene early yesterday morning. The company says a search is under way.

City officials so far have confirmed only that calcium carbide, potassium nitrate and sodium nitrate were at the warehouse. However, the Tianjin government suspended further firefighting to allow the team of experts to survey hazardous materials at the site, assess dangers to the environment and decide how best to proceed. The first explosion occurred was followed seconds later by another, more powerful and a series of smaller blasts.

In an interview with the Shanghai-based publication The Paper, a fire official at the Ministry of Public Safety, Lei Jinde, was quoted as confirming that the first wave of firefighters used water to cool down areas on fire. “But the injuries of the firefighters were so bad and they were all strong young men”, Li said.

He said he returned to his office after treating the emergency workers and, like many of his colleagues, wept for the injured. Tianjin, with a population of about 15 million, is being promoted by the Chinese government as a center for finance and high-tech industry. Motorola, Toyota, Samsung, Nestle, Honeywell, Coca-Cola, Bridgestone, Lafarge, GlaxoSmithKline and Novo Nordisk, among others, have operations in Tianjin, according to a government trade promotion website. People rushed in to the streets in pyjamas and many mistook the explosions for an natural disaster.