Fishing for chemical barrels

Rescuers retrieve barrels of chemicals yesterday on the Songhua River in Yushu City of Jilin Province in northeast China. About 1,500 have been recovered. Rain-triggered flooding swept about 7,000 barrels from warehouses of two chemical factories into the river, a tributary of the Heilongjiang River, on Wednesday. Nearly half of the barrels were loaded with chemicals, and fears of a chemical spill triggered a panic buying of bottled water in Jilin and neighboring Heilongjiang Province. The flooding was confirmed to have killed at least 29 people in Jilin, and another seven people were missing.

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WORKERS were racing yesterday to retrieve the 3,000 chemical-filled barrels that were swept by floods into the Songhua River running through northeast China's Jilin and Heilongjiang provinces.

Each barrel contains 170 kilograms of flammable chemical liquid, according to a press conference held by the Jilin city government. Another 4,000 empty barrels also were floating in the river.

"The barrels are well-sealed," said Wang Mingchen, deputy secretary-general of the city government.

There had been fears that if the chemicals leaked due to barrel damage or explosions, the water in the Songhua River, a major drinking water source of tens of millions of people in the two provinces, would be contaminated.

However, Ministry of Environmental Protection spokesman Tao Detian said yesterday that a water test conducted early yesterday morning showed the river water was not contaminated.

By 7:30pm yesterday, nearly 1,500 barrels, empty or filled with chemicals, had been recovered.

Emergency workers on speed-boats and ferries were using poles and steel nets to collect floating barrels at a port in Yushu City, on the lower reaches of the Songhua River. Three cranes and two fire trucks were assisting on the riverbank.

The retrieved barrels in Yushu are being stored in tents, Chen Rongju, head of the city's work safety watchdog, said.

The barrels tumbled into the Wende River on Wednesday and then floated into the Songhua River after floods broke through storage facilities at two chemical factories - Jilin Xinyaqiang Biochem Co Ltd and Jilin Zhongxin Group - in Yongji County.

"The chemical would only cause an explosion after fully reacting with oxygen under a condition of high temperature. In this case, the chemical would not cause havoc on the river unless a large number of containers were damaged at one time," said Sun Lili, an engineer with the Design and Research Institute of Petrochemical Technology.

The 1,900-km-long Songhua River, the largest tributary of the Heilongjiang River which lies between China and Russia, is the source for drinking water for cities in Jilin and Heilongjiang.

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