Reports allege that hundreds of tons of sodium cyanide were illegally stored at the site of explosion.
China’s state news agency Xinhua reported Monday that the death toll from the warehouse explosions in the Port of Tianjin blasts rose to 114, and that another 70 are still missing.
The news agency said the port’s “main shipping lanes resumed traffic the morning after the late-night blasts, while operations at the berth and warehouse areas returned to normal, with the exception of areas close to the blasts site.”
It said the government is “continuing search and rescue and cleaning hundreds of tons of toxic cyanide at the site while closely monitoring the environment.”
The BBC said an Chinese government investigation into the cause of the explosions is “under way.”
It said the warehouse where the fire occurred was storing “hundreds of tons of sodium cyanide, far more than legally allowed.” It also stated local media were reporting three residential complexes less than a kilometer from the warehouse, when a one kilometer separation was required.
The BBC further reported there were a number of small protests with some residents, adding they wanted compensation for their damaged homes and refused to return to them even if they were ruled safe.
Questions still remain as to whether the devastating blast will affect shipping in the near term. On an average day, nearly 500 containers move from the world’s 10th largest port to the U.S. market, according to maritime trade researcher Zepol.
The ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach are the primary U.S. recipients of cargo from Tianjin and any damage to port infrastructure could mean a slowdown on the trade corridor, Zepol said in a blog post Friday.
A slowdown would not be welcome news in Southern California, where the port complex is already struggling to recover from the labor problems that led to a port slowdown early this year.
Traffic is down 3.5 percent year-to-date at the Port of Los Angeles and only up 2.8 percent in Long Beach. But Zepol said Long Beach’s grow is coming from exports and empty containers because imports from China are down 7 percent for the year versus the same period in 2014.
Major importers utilizing the Port of Tianjin as their gateway to the United States include Pacific Cycle, Lg Sourcing, Itochu Building Products, Yingli Green Energy Americas and Ta Chen International, according to Zepol. Each has imported more than 1,000 containers from Tianjin this year.
Dead, missing after Tianjin explosion exceeds 200
