BEIJING — Workers today began cleaning up a chemical spill in northeastern China after more than 3,000 containers of chemicals were washed into a river by the worst floods to hit the country in more than decade.
The buckets, containing a flammable chemical used to make rubber and adhesives, tumbled into the Songhua River near the city of Jilin in Jilin province after a flood swept through a factory, the official Xinhua News Agency reported. Only about 400 buckets had been recovered as of this morning. No further details were immediately available.
Floods this year have killed at least 928 people, with 477 missing, and caused tens of billions of dollars in damage, the State Flood Control and Drought Prevention office reported. More heavy rains were expected for southeast, southwest and northeast parts of the country through Friday.
About 30,000 residents in the town of Kouqian were trapped in their homes after torrential rains drenched the northeastern province of Jilin on Wednesday, Xinhua reported.
Flooding has hit areas all over China. Thousands of workers sandbagged riverbanks and checked reservoirs in preparation for potential floods expected to flow from the swollen Yangtze and Han rivers, an official with the Yangtze Water Resources Commission said Wednesday.
The Han is expected to rise this week to its highest level in two decades, Xinhua reported. The flood threat was greater than usual because the Yangtze, into which the Han flows, was also reaching peak levels, it said. Workers were prepared to blast holes in the Han embankment to divert floodwaters into a low-lying area of farms and fish ponds, from which more than 5,000 people were evacuated, Xinhua said.
Although China has heavy rains every summer, flooding this year is the worst in more than a decade because the flood-prone Yangtze River Basin has seen 15 percent more rain than in an average year, Duan Yihong, director of the National Meteorological Center, said in a transcript of an interview Wednesday posted on the Xinhua website.
Front Section, Pages 6 on 07/29/2010