"When I heard the first explosion, I thought we were finished," Qian said.
Strangers pulled them from the rubble. They fled barefoot, barely feeling the shards of glass that littered the ground.
Across the city, residents were jolted awake as the blasts shattered windows and fish tanks.
"The shock wave just blew through our apartment. It blew out the glass, it blew out the doors, it knocked out the power," said Vafa Anderson, a teacher at an international school who lives less than 2 kilometers (about a mile) from the explosions' epicenter.
Anderson said he was awakened by the first blast and was looking out the window when the second went off, sending a "huge mushroom cloud" into the sky.