Enormous explosions in a major Chinese port city killed at least 44 people and injured more than 500, state media reported today, leaving a devastated industrial landscape of incinerated cars, toppled shipping containers and burnt-out buildings.
An AFP reporter in Tianjin saw shattered glass up to three kilometres (two miles) from the blast site, after a shipment of explosives detonated in a warehouse, unleashing a fireball that lit up the night sky and rained debris on the city.
The explosion was felt several kilometres away, even being picked up by a Japanese weather satellite, and images showed walls of flame enveloping buildings and rank after rank of gutted cars.
“When I felt the explosion I thought it was an earthquake,” resident Zhang Zhaobo told. “I ran to my father and I saw the sky was already red. All the glass was broken, and I was really afraid.”
Images obtained showed residents, some partially clothed, running for shelter on a street strewn with debris.
“The fireball was huge, maybe as much as 100 metres tall,” said 27-year-old Huang Shiting, who lives close to the site.
“I heard the first explosion and everyone went outside, then there was a series of more explosions, windows shattered and a lot of people who were inside were hurt and came running out, bleeding,” he said.
Paramedics stretchered the wounded into the city’s hospitals as doctors bandaged up victims, many of them covered in blood.
Citing rescue headquarters, the official Xinhua news agency said 44 people were killed, including 12 firefighters.
Scores of firefighters were already on the scene before the explosion, responding to a fire, and at one city hospital a doctor wept over the remains of a firefighter still in uniform, his skin blackened from smoke, as he was wheeled past along with two other bodies.
Xinhua said 520 people had been hospitalised, 66 of them in critical condition.
Mei Xiaoya, 10, and her mother were turned away from the first hospital they went to because there were too many people, she said.
“I’m not afraid, it’s just a scratch,” she said pointing to the bandage on her arm. “But mum was hurt badly, she couldn’t open her eyes.”
Plumes of Smoke
Plumes of smoke still billowed over buildings hours after the blast, which occurred shortly before midnight local time.
