BEIJING — The high-rise apartment complex closest to Tianjin's toxic chemical storage inferno was only 2,000 feet away, despite Chinese laws requiring a 3,200-foot minimum distance from hazardous sites.
The disclosure was among the new details emerging Friday that suggested possible criminal negligence, mixed with rife speculation of an official coverup, in the aftermath of the fire Wednesday night in Tianjin — China's third-largest city and a major northeast seaport, about 90 miles east of Beijing.
The death toll climbed to 85 on Saturday, including 21 firefighters, with more than 700 people injured and some still unaccounted for, the Associated Press reported.
The fire, which is shaping up as one of China's worst industrial calamities, appeared to expose the kinds of regulatory lapses that have plagued the country's transformation into a global economic powerhouse.
Government officials, acutely aware of concerns over the fire, have sought to suppress unauthorized information.
With uncharacteristic defiance, some Chinese news outlets did their own reporting anyway.
Local residents have said they had no idea that any risk had been posed by the warehouses where the fire began, a modest blaze that suddenly exploded in mammoth fireballs. They engulfed office buildings and port facilities, as well as onlookers who had gathered to watch the firefighters at work.
The developers of Vanke Port City, a residential complex that is practically at the incinerated area's doorstep and has now been evacuated indefinitely, said they had been told when they started construction in 2010 that the warehouses in question handled only "common goods."
"We were never notified that the warehouses were modified to handle dangerous goods," a spokesman for the developer said in an e-mail.
According to Chinese law, facilities that handle hazardous materials must be more than 3,200 feet from homes and public buildings. Vanke is 2,000 feet away.
Suspicions among the populace were further raised by the censorship of information.
The vacuum was filled by online speculation about whether the owners of Rui Hai International Logistics, the company that owned the warehouse where the blasts originated, might be connected to senior government leaders.