TIANJIN, China — Chinese leaders scrambled on Thursday to contain the fallout from an apocalyptic fire in this major port city that appeared to reflect an enormous regulatory failure, caused by a witch’s brew of toxic chemicals housed within a mile of thickly populated residential areas.
President Xi Jinping personally ordered subordinates to ensure that all unaccounted-for victims were found after the Wednesday night disaster, and the army sent more than 200 hazardous-chemical specialists in protective suits to investigate.
But authorities also sought to constrict the flow of information as many traumatized citizens fumed over how such a disaster could happen and expressed frustration over what they called a lack of reliable guidance before or after the fire.
They wondered if even the air was safe because of the smoke, still billowing hours later from vestiges of the inferno, which destroyed an industrial zone near the port. Many people wore masks.
“Right now, we don’t know anything,” said Sun Meirong, 52, an office cleaner who descended 13 flights of stairs with her 1-year-old grandson after the explosions blew in her apartment windows and front door.
“There were two or three thousand people living in that neighborhood, and they could have been notified earlier to evacuate,” said Wang Dong, 55. A taxi driver, he was struck in the head when his apartment door violently unhinged.
“I’m not sure why they did nothing at all to alert us,,” he said.
Questions loomed over the precise reasons the chemicals had ignited, detonating in frightening fireballs that registered on earthquake scales, engulfed hundreds of new cars awaiting export, and shattered windows in high-rises a mile away.
Thursday evening, the authorities said at least 50 people had died, including 12 firefighters, with hundreds hospitalized.
At least one chemical known to have been stockpiled at the site, calcium carbide, can emit flammable gases when it becomes wet.
Some outside specialists speculated that firefighters, in their effort to douse the flames, may have inadvertently contributed to the explosions.
Many hospital patients were injured by shattered glass. Throughout the day, hundreds of others lined up to donate blood in the wilting heat.
The disaster began late Wednesday, when firefighters in Tianjin’s Binhai district responded to reports of a blaze at the chemical storage site, run by Ruihai International Logistics.
State news media and government officials said it was a four-year-old company that unloads and stores hazardous cargo.
On Thursday afternoon, the site still smoldered as Tianjin officials, unsure about the nature of the chemicals, let the blaze extinguish on its own.