Investigators searched for clues on Friday to identify what caused two huge explosions at a warehouse storing volatile chemicals at a busy port in north-east China, as foreign and local companies assessed the damage to their operations.<\/p>\n
The blasts in the city of Tianjin on Wednesday night killed at least 50 people, including a dozen firefighters, state media said.<\/p>\n
About 700 people were injured, 71 seriously.<\/p>\n
Rescuers pulled one survivor from the wreckage on Friday, a city official told reporters.<\/p>\n
Columns of smoke from fires still burning rose from the blast site amid the devastation of crumpled shipping containers, thousands of torched cars and port buildings reduced to burnt-out shells.<\/p>\n
The warehouse, designed to house dangerous and toxic chemicals, was storing mainly ammonium nitrate, potassium nitrate and calcium carbide at the time of the blasts, according to police.<\/p>\n
Chemical safety experts said calcium carbide reacts with water to create acetylene, a highly explosive gas.<\/p>\n
The explosion could have been caused when firefighters sprayed the calcium carbide with water, they said.<\/p>\n
The official Xinhua news agency has said several containers in the warehouse had caught fire before the blasts.<\/p>\n
Source: AFP<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Investigators searched for clues on Friday to identify what caused two huge explosions at a warehouse storing volatile chemicals at a busy port in north-east China, as foreign and local companies assessed the damage to their operations. The blasts in the city of Tianjin on Wednesday night killed at least 50 people, including a dozen … Continue reading “China probes two large Tianjin blasts”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2961,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,123],"tags":[12215,144,9903],"class_list":["post-20036","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","category-world","tag-chemical-factory","tag-china","tag-explosions"],"cc_featured_image_caption":{"caption_text":false,"source_text":false,"source_url":false},"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20036","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2961"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=20036"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20036\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":20037,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20036\/revisions\/20037"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=20036"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=20036"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=20036"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}