China: Death toll after blast at warehouse reaches 114

BEIJING

The death toll from explosions at a port city in northern China has risen to 114, with firefighters accounting for most of the casualties at a warehouse where chemicals had been stored.

Gong Jiansheng, deputy head of Tianjin's publicity department, said Monday that 54 of the dead – including 39 firefighters and five policemen -- have been identified.

Xinhua also cited him as saying that firefighters made up most of the 70 people still missing since Wednesday’s fire.

The figure of those missing had previously been reported at 95, but 25 were later identified among the dead.

Meanwhile, 698 people remained in hospital Monday, with 57 in critical condition.

Around 17,000 households and 1,700 businesses in the area have been affected by the blast in the Binhai New Area, with at least 6,000 people forced to evacuate.

Another minor explosion took place Monday morning at the site, where specialized anti-chemical soldiers have been searching since the weekend.

Wang Ke, who led one of the groups, told Xinhua that moving throught the site was “extremely dangerous, because of the burning chemicals and twisted containers, which could collapse at any minute.”

“We had to make marks in order not to get lost," he said.

Bao Jingling, chief engineer at Tianjin’s environmental protection bureau, said around 700 tons of sodium cyanide had been stored at the warehouse and were still intact.

The containers of the chemical – fatal when ingested or inhaled – are to be collected before being transported to safe places.

Reports have suggested that the company that owned the Tianjin city warehouse, Rui Hai International Logistics, may have been illegally transporting chemicals.

Until Sunday, the presence of potassium nitrate, sodium nitrate and calcium carbide - which reacts with water to create the highly explosive acetylene - had also been confirmed.

Pictures from the site in the port city - around 75 miles east of Beijing - showed thousands of mangled, melted cars and containers alongside a huge crater into the ground.

On Saturday, President Xi Jinping urged authorities to learn from the "extremely profound" lesson.

In the wake of the incident, China’s most populated city Shanghai has launched widespread work safety inspections for enterprises dealing with hazardous chemicals, inflammable materials and explosives.