Reports of second blast in Tianjin

The survivor, who was pulled out 32 hours after the twin explosions shattered the economic hub, was identified as a 19-year-old firefighter named Zhou Ti who belongs to the Binhai New Area brigade of Tianjin’s fire department.

They were sparked by a fire at what authorities said were shipping containers containing hazardous material at a warehouse, and they struck a mostly industrial zone late at night – otherwise the death toll could have been much higher.

In the face of aggressive government attempts to control the flow of news about the disaster, there was rampant Internet speculation about the owners of Ruihai global Logistics, the company that owns the warehouse where the blast occurred, and whether they might be connected to senior government leaders. “We’re now doing all we can to rescue the missing”, Zhou said.

Tianjin, in China’s northwest, is home to 7.5 million people and is known as a base for the petrochemical and refining industries.

On Saturday, fires sent plumes of black smoke skyward near where explosions devastated a chemical warehouse in Tianjin on Wednesday.

Chemical safety experts said calcium carbide reacts with water to create acetylene, a highly explosive gas, which could have been the reason behind the second blast when the firemen sprayed the calcium carbide with water.

Wang Lianqing, a senior engineer from environmental science academy in Tianjin, said that sodium cyanide was a water-soluble substance, but that site has been sealed and normal rain would not produce any risky reactions.

About 6,300 people have been displaced and around 721 injured, with 33 of those in a serious condition, Xinhua news agency said.

State media reported that the casualties of the first three squads of firefighters to respond and of a neighborhood police station have not yet been determined, suggesting that the death toll could still go up.

Cargo is stored in a warehouse for no more than 40 days before being transferred elsewhere, he said, adding that the blast site had been redesigned to store hazardous chemicals.

Fire officials say hazardous chemicals stored at the warehouse were ignited by fire.

The force of the blast was felt many kilometres away from the warehouse where the explosion took place in the port city and residents registered their horror at the scale of the explosions.

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

Zhou said more than 1,000 firefighters, including 232 from neighboring Hebei Province, were still at the site.

The advisory came from the official microblog of the branch of the National Health and Family Planning Commission of China in the northeastern port of Tianjin.