Oct. 12--A warehouse explosion rocked the Chinese port city of Tianjin on Monday night, only two months after a series of blasts at a chemical storage facility in the city killed more than 100 people and injured nearly 800.
There were no deaths or injuries reported in Monday's blast, which occurred about 11:30 p.m. at an approximately 5,300-square-foot warehouse storing ethanol in Tianjin's Beichen District in Xiditou Township, according to a news brief posted to the Chinese news website Sohu.
The state broadcaster CCTV later reported that the fire had been put out.
Pictures posted to Chinese social media sites showed an orange fireball lighting up the night sky; one showed a man watching a plume of smoke rise from a distant mass of flames.
In August, the series of explosions in Tianjin -- a city of 8 million a short drive from Beijing -- reduced buildings to rubble, burned or smashed hundreds of vehicles and raised widespread fears of chemical contamination of air and water. Many of the victims were first responders.
Those explosions occurred in the Binhai New Area, a newly built urban district that includes an industrial area, high-tech office parks, residential buildings and a port. The blast on Monday occurred much closer to Tianjin's central city.
The latest explosion quickly became a trending topic on Sina Weibo, the country's most popular microblog, racking up 250,000 searches by early morning Tuesday.
"It's Tianjin again!!" said one widely forwarded post. "Hope and pray that everyone is safe. You must treasure the people around you, because you never know whether some accident will strike before tomorrow."
