TIANJIN, China — Huge explosions in a warehouse district sent up massive fireballs that turned the night sky into day, killing at least 44 people and injuring hundreds in the Chinese port city of Tianjin, officials and witnesses said Thursday.
Twelve of the dead were from among the more than 1,000 firefighters sent to fight the blaze set off by the explosions shortly before midnight Wednesday, the official Xinhua News agency said. It said 520 people were being treated in hospitals, 66 of them with serious injuries.
The blasts, originating at a warehouse for hazardous material, turned buildings in the immediate vicinity into charred, skeletal shells while shattering windows up to several miles away.
“I thought it was an earthquake, so I rushed downstairs without my shoes on,” Tianjin resident Zhang Siyu, whose home is several miles from the blast site, said in a telephone interview. “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 said she could see wounded people weeping. She said she did not see anyone who had been killed, but “I could feel death.”
Police in Tianjin said an initial blast took place at shipping containers in a warehouse for hazardous materials owned by Ruihai Logistics, a company that says it’s properly approved to handle hazardous materials. State media said senior management of the company had been detained by authorities.
It’s part of an industrial park, with some apartment buildings in the vicinity.
The official Xinhua News agency said an initial explosion triggered other blasts at nearby businesses. The National Earthquake Bureau reported two major blasts before midnight, the first with an equivalent of 3 tons of TNT, and the second with the equivalent of 21 tons.
Photos taken by bystanders and circulating on microblogs show a gigantic fireball high in the sky, with a mushroom-cloud. Other photos on state media outlets showed a sea of fire that painted the night sky bright orange, with tall plumes of smoke.
About 1.2 miles from the explosion site the nearly completed the luxury Fifth Avenue apartment complex sits on a road strewn with broken glass and pieces of charred metal thrown from explosion. Like surrounding buildings, the Mediterranean style complex had all its windows blown out, and some of its surfaces were scorched.
“It’s lucky no one had moved in,” said a worker on the site, Liu Junwei. “But for us it’s a total loss. Two years hard work down the drain.”
At the nearby Taida Hospital as dawn broke, military medical tents were set up. Photos circulating online showed patients in bandages and with cuts.
State broadcaster CCTV said six battalions of firefighters had brought the ensuing fire under control, although it was still burning in the early hours of Thursday.
Ruihai Logistics says on its website that it was established in 2011 and is an approved company for handling hazardous materials. It says it handles 1 million tons of cargo annually.
Tianjin, with a population of about 15 million, is about 120 kilometers (75 miles) east of Beijing on the Bohai Sea and is one of the country’s major ports. It is also one of China’s more modern cities and is connected to the capital by a high speed rail line.
