TIANJIN, China – This bustling port city about a 90-minute drive from the Chinese capital confronted scenes of death and devastation Thursday and questions about what had caused the explosions at a warehouse storing a witches’ brew of toxic chemicals.
As the fatalities reached 50 from the blasts Wednesday night, rescue workers combed the rubble of the city’s flattened warehouse district for bodies while hundreds of people crowded hospitals. Throughout the day, hundreds more lined up to donate blood in the wilting heat.
The blasts, at a company licensed to store hazardous chemicals, left more than 500 people wounded, 52 of them critically, and produced shock waves felt for miles.
At least 12 of the dead were firefighters who had responded to earlier reports of a blaze at the chemical storage site run by Ruihai International Logistics, a 4-year-old company that unloads and stores hazardous cargo, the state news media and government officials said.
On Thursday afternoon, fires at the site continued to produce a steady cloud of smoke after Tianjin officials, unsure about the nature of the chemicals, decided to let the blazes burn out on their own. The state news media also reported that a military team of specialists in handling chemicals had been sent to Tianjin.
Residents of the Binhai district, frustrated by the lack of reliable information, said they were unsure whether the air was safe, and many people continued to wear disposable face masks throughout the day.
The devastation was worst in the port area, a sparsely populated expanse of warehouses and parking lots nearly 40 miles from the heart of Tianjin. Had the blast occurred during the day, the death toll would have most likely been far higher. Favorable winds Thursday also shielded residents from greater harm by blowing the toxic plume out to sea. Ruihai’s website was inaccessible, and calls to the company were met with a busy signal.
Also inaccessible was the website for the Tianjin Administration for Industry and Commerce, the agency that collects information about companies, their executives and shareholders. In a social media post, the agency said the blast had forced it to close down temporarily.
According to the Tianjin Tanggu Environmental Monitoring Station, the company stored a collection of toxic industrial chemicals. The company was also licensed to handle highly combustible substances.
