Not less than 50 people are confirmed dead, including 12 firefighters, officials said on Thursday, August 13. More than 500 are hospitalized, 57 with severe injuries.
Dozens of firefighters are still missing.
Hell on Earth in China on August 13, 2015.
The Chinese state-run Xinhua news agency said local authorities suspended firefighting efforts because of a lack of information about the “dangerous goods”stored at the warehouse at the heart of the blasts.
A warehouse site owned by Tianjin Dongjiang Port Rui Hai International Logistics Co. Ltd., is said to be the origin of the blast. The executives of the company, which stores and transports dangerous chemicals, have been taken into custody, state media said.
Men, cars and buildings were shattered by the twin blast.
The magnitude of the blasts equaled the size of a massive earthquake, officials say.
The explosions’ destructive force smashed buildings and mangled shipping containers in the port city of Tianjin.
According to the China Earthquake Networks Center, the first blast was huge, but the second was even more powerful: the equivalent of 21 metric tons of TNT, or a magnitude 2.9 earthquake.
Many still lay within the debris, as the death toll is expected to rise.
At least 12 firemen have been confirmed dead, with a dozen more missing in the flames.
Qian Jiping, a witness and survivor of the explosion, said the house where he and his wife were staying was destroyed by the power of the explosions.
He said: “When I heard the first explosion, I thought we were finished.”
Residents take a look at the colossal damage.
Many ran off without clothes and money as the blasts went off.
Qian narrated that strangers pulled them from the rubble, and afterwards they fled barefoot, desperate to get away, barely feeling the jagged shards of glass that littered the ground.
Many victims of Tianjin blast suffer serious burns
A survivour rushed to a hospital amidst fears of a repeated blast
Residents were jolted awake as the blasts shattered windows and fish tanks across the city. People gathered outside one hospital not far from an area of badly damaged buildings, waiting for news of loved ones.
A victim of Tianjin exlosion
While crowds were waiting by the hospital, a severely burned man was wheeled past waiting crowds. Some people collapsed from the heartbreak of losing someone close to them, as rescue efforts continue.
Many have started to evacuate the city with fears that another explosion might go off soon, others fear that since the explosions were chemical triggered, then some lethal gas might be in the air, as a thick chemical odor hung in the air.
It is important to note that industrial accidents are not uncommon in China following three decades of breakneck economic growth. A blast at an auto parts factory in eastern China killed 75 people a year ago, when a room filled with metal dust exploded.
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