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Wednesday, 12 August 2015
China blasts: fireball from Tianjin explosions injures hundreds and kills at least 17 – latest updates Rolling coverage as huge explosions rock the northern port city of Tianjin
Scenes fromTianjin:
Black smoke was still visible from Teda hospital, where it is emanating from the blast site just a few blocks away.
Scores of volunteers were on hand outside the hospital with deliveries of stacks of bottled water.
Inside the hospital, some distraught victims and their families seemed to be giving some interviews with local media.
One volunteer instructed this reporter not to take photos. A police
officer instructed me to leave the hospital and go to a nearby news
centre.
Army tents were set up outside the hospital but they did not seem yet to be in use.
Locals, especially taxi drivers, are offering free lifts to those affected and injured.
Walking from the hospital closer to the blast site, people wait outside their apartment buildings with packed bags.
From Tianjin Teda hospital, smoke is visible from the site of the
blasts, as city residents head out of the area. Photograph: Fergus
Ryan/Guardian
Reports and pictures from Tianjin show scenes of devastation. Windows
and doors have been blown out of high-rise apartments and office
buildings destroyed. A fireball appears to have swept through a parking
lot of 1,000 new Renault cars, with the paint burned off and the cars
left charred.
My colleague Fergus Ryan is in Tianjin and
approaching the site of the blasts. He reports that buildings some
distance from the explosions have suffered damage, with many windows
blown out and glass scattered widely:
Windows smashed in tower blocks in residential area close to Tianjin blast site. Photograph: Fergus Ryan/Guardian
Chinese state media has been talking to eyewitnesses who were in
Tianjin at the time of the disaster, the Guardian’s Beijing
correspondent Tom Phillips reports:
One man, named only as Chi, told Xinhua:
“Everything in my home was ruined in the blast. It is so horrible. The
pants and shoes you see me wearing now were picked up on my way to the
hospital.” Hu Xiaoliang, a 32-year-old truck driver, said he
had been napping under his vehicle at the time of the explosions. The
force of the blast “catapulted” him away from beneath the truck, he
said.
Firefighters described hellish scenes near the disaster site. “It’s
all black and smog, I can’t see anything inside,” one told Xinhua.
Twelve hours after two huge blasts rocked the Chinese port city of Tianjin, here is what we know:
Latest casualty figures put the death toll at at least 17, with 32 injured and a further 283 people in hospital.
Nine firefighters are confirmed to have died, although it is not clear whether they are counted among the 17. Authorities say they have lost contact with a further 36 firefighters tackling the huge blazes.
The blasts occurred around midnight local time (4pm GMT, 2am AEST),
when a shipment of so-far unidentified “dangerous goods” in a warehouse went up in flames,
causing explosions so strong that they shook homes on the other side of
the city and sent flaming debris arching over nearby high-rise
buildings.
Smoke rise from the site of explosions in the Binhai New Area in Tianjin. Photograph: Yue Yuewei/AP
President Xi Jinping and premier Li Keqiang “have urged all-out efforts to save the injured and minimise casualties in the Tianjin blast”, state media says.
State media also reports
that the owners of the factory at the centre of the blasts – named as
Tianjin Dongjiang Port Rui Hai International Logistics Co. Ltd – have
been detained.
Tianjin, the port gateway to Beijing, is a major base for petrochemicals, refining and other industries.
Factories in the port city have been told not to open until they have been checked for safety.
Firefighters trucks and other rescue vehicles are pictured as smoke
rises among shipping containers after the explosions. Photograph: China
Stringer Network/Reuters
Amber Ziye Wang reports that firefighting efforts have been suspended in part because of fears that the warehouses could contain cyanide products, which are highly toxic.
My colleague Fergus Ryan is at Tianjin Teda hospital, where many of those injured in the blasts have been taken.
A number of tents have been set up outside the hospital building to treat the injured, reported to be at least 400 people:
Emergency tents set up to treat wounded patients outside Tianjin Teda hospital. Photograph: Fergus Ryan/Guardian
Patients and relatives outside the Tianjin Teda hospital. Photograph: Fergus Ryan/Guardian Australia
Efforts to contain the fires in Tianjin have been suspended due to
uncertainty over the contents of warehouses and other areas that are
ablaze, reports via BBC News and Reuters say.
The Binhai New District government in Tianjin city made the
announcement on its official Weibo account, saying firefighting efforts
have been suspended due to lack of clarity about the contents and amount
of the “dangerous goods” in the warehouse.
We have already heard that nine firefighters have died and 36 are
missing in the wake of the two blasts. Around 100 fire trucks are on the
scene.
A fire fighter puts out fire on cars affected by the explosion in the
Binhai New Area earlier on Thursday. Photograph: Xinhua /Landov /
Barcroft Media
Associated Press reports that authorities on the scene are exercising strict controls over reporters and onlookers:
As is customary during disasters, Chinese authorities are trying to keep a tight control over information.
Police are keeping journalists and bystanders away with a cordon as many as a few kilometres from the site.
On China’s popular microblogging platform 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.
Local reports from close to the hospital suggested that reporters had
been told by authorities there not to take photographs and to delete
any images they had taken.
Chinese state-controlled news agency Xinhua has provided some more
information on what it describes as “the logistic company that owns the
warehouses”:
According to the company’s official website, Tianjin Dongjiang Port
Rui Hai International Logistics Co. Ltd. was founded in 2011 and is a
storage and distribution center of containers of dangerous goods at the
Tianjin port.
The company’s business includes the storage, transfer, distribution
and customs declaration of dangerous chemicals. Freight volume through
the company stands at one million tonnes each year, with annual revenues
exceeding 30 million yuan (US$4.7m).
The center includes two warehouses for dangerous goods. One is located next to an office building.
Executives of the company have been controlled.
The meaning of “controlled” is not clear. It is likely to mean “detained”.
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