Over 100 tons of sodium cyanide at Tianjin warehouse explosion area

Prosecutors in Tianjin said earlier they were investigating two senior officials from Binhai district on suspicion of corruption, although they did not specify whether the charges were linked to the blasts.

Firefighters unknowingly sprayed water on a burning container at the site of deadly twin blasts in the Chinese city of Tianjin last week, according to an investigative report that was later taken offline.

Family members of the victims, firemen and policemen – whose colleagues account for many among the dead – laid white chrysanthemums in front of a memorial wall with a sign reading “condolences to those who died in the August 12 accident”.

“We’ve had some small damage at the plant, such as broken windows”, a company spokeswoman said.

A week ago, massive explosions rocked the north-eastern coastal city of Tianjin, China, killing at least 114 people and 57 people missing. About 1,000 firefighters responded to the disaster, and 85 of them remained unaccounted for on Sunday. Almost 700 tons of sodium cyanide have been found in the explosion site.

Meanwhile, heavy rain has hampered recovery efforts. Surrounding the very big crater are huge piles of rubble and debris, the remains of a few buildings, and a parking lot filled with the wrecks of hundreds of cars. The exposure to hydrogen cyanide can cause burns, dermatitis, headaches and even death.

The explosions in the prosperous northeastern city?which were large enough to be detected by natural disaster sensors?have provoked continuing resident anxieties regarding public-health threats from the hundreds of tons of toxic chemicals stored in the blast zone, including sodium cyanide, which emits poisonous fumes when heated.

The ministry’s directive ordered government authorities at all levels to check whether companies within their jurisdiction that produce and store hazardous materials comply with safety regulations, including if they are a safe distance from residential areas and do not exceed storage limits.

There were about seven small explosions in the area on Saturday, according to a post on the micro-blog of the official China Central Television.

A resident surnamed Sun, who had rented an office about 1000 meters away from the warehouse, said he would not have done so had he known there was storage of risky materials nearby.

Fire fighters after the explosions.

The commission said lessons learned from the blasts are “extremely profound”.

More than 40 different types of hazardous chemicals were being stored at the site with a total volume of about 3,000 tons, deputy national fire chief Niu Hueguang was quoted as saying on the China Fire Services’ official website. But online map searches show the Ruihai worldwide Logistics warehouse was within 500 metres of both an expressway and a 100,000-square-meter (1-million-square-foot) apartment complex.

“Nobody told us that there were chemicals, or I would never have chosen to live here”, Liu Xuerui, 27, a local resident whose home was damaged, told the China Daily.

The clean-up is a major operation, as the explosions have affected 17,000 households and 1,700 companies.

Tianjin officials have been hard-pressed to answer how the warehouse was allowed to operate in its location.