A Chinese city of 3 million people has set off panicked buying of bottled water by announcing its water system will be shut down for four days to check for contamination from a chemical plant explosion, news reports said Tuesday.
BEIJING — A Chinese city of 3 million people has set off panicked buying of bottled water by announcing its water system will be shut down for four days to check for contamination from a chemical plant explosion, news reports said Tuesday.
The city government of Harbin in China's northeast announced in a bulletin on its official Web site that it would suspend water service for four days starting from Tuesday evening.
It didn't say how many homes would be affected.
On Monday, "anxious residents thronged supermarkets and shops to buy whatever they could lay their hands on," the government newspaper China Daily said. Photos in the newspaper showed empty supermarket shelves labeled "drinking water."
The shutdown was prompted by a Nov. 13 explosion at a petrochemical plant in the nearby city of Jilin that killed five people, the official Xinhua News Agency said.
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City officials worried that the blast "may have caused a leakage of poisonous substances" into the Songhua River, which supplies Harbin with drinking water.
The explosion in Jilin also forced the evacuation of 10,000 nearby residents. The blast was blamed on human error in a tower that processed benzene, a highly flammable liquid.
"To ensure the safety of water, the municipal government has decided to thoroughly check the city's water supply system and cut off supply temporarily," the city statement said.
Prices of bottled water in Harbin have doubled, and the city government has ordered bathhouses and car washes to suspend operation, the China Daily said.
The city government warned on its Web site that retailers who hiked the price of water would be punished according to the law, but gave no specifics.
Customers of the Shangri-La Hotel in Harbin were being asked to use water sparingly by limiting showers and laundry usage, the hotel's public relations manager, Zhang Yan, said by telephone.
Zhang said the hotel had stored 600 tons of water for drinking and everyday use, which at their current occupancy level would last them about four days.
Extra bottled water was also being trucked in from other Shangri-La Hotels in China, she said.
The Shanghai Daily newspaper said on its Web site Tuesday that Harbin had 918 groundwater wells that would continue to supply some residential areas with water.
Fire engines would be used to pump water from the wells to hospitals, schools and public organizations in need, it said.
Source: Associated Press
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