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Reuters is reporting that the warehouse was mostly storing large amounts of ammonium nitrate, and that firefighters may have inadvertently helped detonate it by spraying water onto the fire as there were also large amounts of calcium carbide:
http://uk.reuters.com/article/2015/08/14/uk-china-blast-idUKKCN0QJ01H20150814Calcium carbide + water = highly explosive acetylene. Acetylene detonated by a fire would be a perfect catalyst for the ammonium nitrate.
Mankind never seems to learn when it comes to ammonium nitrate, this list is pretty woeful:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ammonium_nitrate_disastersN.b. A lot of talk about China's rapid industrial expansion and prioritising growth over safety but it's worth pointing out that the most recent serious AN explosion (15 people killed) was in West, Texas, two years ago.
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I honestly thought the footage from that explosion was fake at first. It looks like Cloverfield or something.