Rescue workers frantically dig through rubble in Chinese port city following blasts that killed at least 50
(FOX)
Chinese rescue workers were still digging through rubble Thursday in a desperate hunt for survivors following a series of explosions the day before at a hazardous chemicals warehouse in the port city of Tianjin that killed at least 50 and injured more than 700.
The municipal government in Tianjin, a key city about 75 miles east of Beijing, said 701 people were injured, including 71 in serious condition. It gave no figure for the missing
More than 1,000 firefighters had been sent to the city to battle fires that had been set off by the blasts, which began late Wednesday at the warehouse and caused huge, fiery blasts that knocked doors off buildings in the area, shattering windows several miles away and turned nearby buildings into skeletal shells.
“I thought it was an earthquake, so I rushed downstairs without my shoes on,” Tianjin resident Zhang Siyu, whose home is several kilometers 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.”
There was no indication of what caused the blasts, and no immediate sign of any large release of toxic chemicals into the air. The Beijing News newspaper reported on its website that there was some unidentified yellow foam on the ground at the site, although it was not clear if this was contamination or part of the fire-fighting efforts.