Inside Tianjin's Ground Zero: The catastrophic scene at the heart of deadly blast zone

It was hard to get a true sense of the deadly blasts in Tianjin until I set foot in ground zero.

Early Monday afternoon, the local government sent six Toyota Coaster buses to drive journalists to the heavily guarded blast zone for the first time. It was the opportunity we'd been waiting for, although many of us had sneaked into the area before.

"We always planned to bring you here. Today it's just the right time," a local official said.

Perhaps the sight of Premier Li Keqiang visiting the site without protective gear on Sunday had reassured people.

We got out at the four-lane Haibin Avenue next to the blast scene at around 3pm. Dead - that was my first reaction. It felt dead. The only sound I could hear was from excavators.

Containers, once neatly stacked, were scattered, burned and twisted, as if a giant angry boy had smashed his toy blocks. They were in the creek near the highway, on top of cars - themselves just gutted skeletons of vehicles - and other places where they didn't belong. That was as vivid an image as any showing the strength of the blasts.

Almost seven days after the explosions, black smoke still seeped from a pile of containers.