A warehouse in the Chinese port city of Tianjin erupted in a series of thunderous explosions, killing at least 50 people, spewing massive fireballs and forcing officials to face uncomfortable questions about industrial safety standards and possible toxic fallout.
The fiery blasts — powerful enough to register on earthquake monitoring scales and shatter windows several miles away — began in a warehouse storing “dangerous and chemical goods” that had caught on fire shortly before midnight Wednesday, state media reported.
At least 12 of the 50 killed were firefighters, according to Xinhua, China’s state news agency. More than 700 others were hospitalized, including 71 victims who suffered critical injuries, Xinhua reported.
Hospitals in the area, in eastern China, are said to be overwhelmed by the number of casualties, and an unknown number of people remain unaccounted for in the wreckage; the municipal government in Tianjin did not say how many were missing.
Police in Tianjin told the Associated Press that an initial blast occurred at a warehouse storing shipping containers of flammable material owned by Ruihai Logistics, a company that says it is approved to handle such materials. That explosion then triggered similar blowouts at other facilities.
The cause of the initial fire and explosion is still unclear.
The blasts took place in the Binhai district, an industrial zone near Tianjin’s harbor. The area is dominated by warehouses and construction sites, though some residential buildings were also affected.
“I thought it was an earthquake, so I rushed downstairs without my shoes on,” Zhang Siyu, who lives several miles from the warehouses, told the Associated Press. “Only once I was outside did I realize it was an explosion. There was the huge fireball in the sky with thick clouds. Everybody could see it.”
Zhang told the wire service that she saw wounded people weeping, but did not see anybody who had been killed.
But, she said: “I could feel death.”
The fire was mostly under control by the time of a news conference Thursday afternoon in Tianjin. But the Tianjin state government suspended further efforts to extinguish the flames while a biochemical emergency rescue team comprising 214 officers and soldiers assessed the materials on the site to determine what dangers might remain.
The news conference turned chaotic as reporters bombarded officials with questions they appeared unready to answer.
Zhang Yong, governor of the Binhai district, said the government was focusing its efforts on determining the cause of the fire that sparked the blasts and treating the injured.
Officials did not explain why more than 1,000 firefighters were sent into the inferno when there was risk of further explosions.
The director of Tianjin’s environmental protection bureau, Wen Wurui, assured reporters that pollution levels are not too far from the standards considered safe, though he warned that they could cause harm if inhaled over a long period of time.
Asked why residential buildings were built within the range of a facility storing potentially explosive materials, officials said that the compounds were actually quite far from the explosion and were only affected because the blasts were so strong.
Video taken in Tianjin and posted by Reuters showed a massive fire, then a burst of light followed by a percussive cracking sound and a spray of debris. A mushroom cloud of smoke poured upward, illuminated by the fire’s red-orange glow. The blast was followed by a second, even bigger light burst and an even louder explosion. According to CCTV, the second blowout was as powerful as 21 tons of TNT.
“It was like what we were told a nuclear bomb would be like,” truck driver Zhao Zhencheng, who spent the night in the cab of his truck, told the AP. “I’ve never even thought I’d see such a thing. It was terrifying, but also beautiful.”
[Videos show Chinese city of Tianjin rocked by enormous explosion]
State media said senior management of the company that owns the warehouse have been detained.
President Xi Jinping vowed a thorough investigation; Xi said in a statement that the responsible parties should be “severely handled,” Reuters reported.
Dawn on Thursday morning illuminated scenes of devastation around the site of the blasts: 1,000 brand new cars sat destroyed in a nearby lot, their paint stripped by the heat and their metal bodies charred. Glass blown from windows littered the streets. Worker’s dormitories were reduced to piles of twisted metal and burnt belongings. Fires still burned, sending clouds of smoke out over the debris.
Surrounding buildings are still in danger of collapsing, and all residents around the blast site have been evacuated from the area, according to CCTV.
Tianjin is a major port in northern China, less than 100 miles southeast of Beijing. It’s home to about 15 million people, according to the AP, and is one of China’s most modern cities.
The city, like many in China, has been the site of rapid modernization and development. And it is not the first to deal with a deadly industrial accident in recent years.
According to the Beijing Times, Tianjin officials charged with overseeing industrial safety met with administrators for the major hazardous chemical businesses in Binhai earlier this month.
On Thursday morning, reporters were moved away from the explosion zone, and users of Chinese social media networks complained that their posts were being deleted. Some of the posts questioned the number of casualties, while others lamented that Tianjin television stations were playing cartoons and soap operas rather than coverage of the explosion.
One deleted post read: “The explosion in Tianjin shocked the world, but only Tianjin TV did not feel it.”
A CNN reporter shooting video at a Tianjin hospital was shoved away by several angry people, some of them shouting: “Don’t let foreigners report in China!”
At the news conference Thursday, state officials apologized for the incident, blaming it on a few individuals. “We protect the media’s legal right to interview,” they said.
The AP reports that it is customary for Chinese authorities to keep tight control over the flow of information during disasters:
Police are keeping journalists and bystanders away with a cordon as many as a few kilometers from the site. On China’s popular microblogging platform of Weibo, some users complain that their posts about the blasts have been deleted, and the number of searchable posts on the disaster fluctuated, in a sign that authorities are manipulating or placing limits on the number of posts.
On Freeweibo, the uncensored version of the Chinese microblogging site, the most searched terms were “Tianjin” and “explosion in Tianjin.” Meanwhile, rumors have swirled online that the death toll is even larger than state media have reported.
“At this time of tragedy, the United States extends its heartfelt condolences to the Chinese people over the deadly explosion,” National Security Council spokesman Ned Price said in a statement. “Our thoughts are with the victims and their families, and with China’s first responders who are working to help those who were injured.”
As nightfall arrived Thursday, dispatches from the industrial city sounded increasingly apocalyptic.
“You can see the devastation everywhere: in the hollowed-out shells of barely-standing buildings, in the anguished faces of relatives waiting for news of loved ones, in the parade of scorched cars,” CNN reported. The network added that “a thick chemical odor hung in the air. Fires still burned in the waterfront industrial district where the explosions went off. And the grim toll kept mounting.”
This post has been updated. Gu Jinglu contributed reporting from Beijing.