Tianjin residents demand blast compensation
The death toll from the two blasts last on Wednesday has risen to 114, officials said. More than 700 people were injured and 70 are missing, most of them firemen, the official Xinhua newsagency said.
The explosions sent fireballs high into the sky and hurled flaming debris across the world’s 10th-largest port, burning out buildings and shattering windows kilometers away.
Xinhua said there had been another small explosion on Monday.
As teams specialised in handling hazardous chemicals scrambled to clean up the site, Tianjin’s deputy mayor, He Shushan, confirmed there were about 700 tons of deadly chemical sodium cyanide in the warehouse that blew up.
“Most was concentrated in the core” blast area, he said. Workers would finish a search of a 3km perimeter to identify and clean up chemicals by the end of the day, he said.
About 200 protesters gathered outside a hotel where officials were briefing journalists.
“This is not a demonstration. This is simply our only channel to attract the government’s attention,” said Li Jiao, whose home was close to the blast site.
About 6,300 people were evacuated from around the site in the city of about 15 million and the gateway to China’s industrial north-east.
About three dozen police and military personnel blocked the crowd from entering the hotel.
Some protesters chanted for the government to “buy back” their homes and others carried signs that read “fix our homes, that’s our demand”.
There were no clashes.
Another protester surnamed Li said that he had taken out an 800,000 yuan (€113,000) loan to buy an apartment that was so badly damaged it was leaning over.
He said that his family would never live there for fear of health risks
“Most of the people who bought those homes are young, white-collar workers like me. It isn’t a small amount of money,” he said.
Paramilitary police accompanied residents back to their homes to collect belongings, the People’s Liberation Army Daily reported on its microblog.
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