Saw this yesterday and didn't get a chance to blog it...
Thousands of residents of Harbin on Wednesday night jammed its railway station and booked out all available flights as a deadly 80km toxic slick made its way down the Songhua river, threatening to poison the north-eastern Chinese city’s water supplies.
The slick of benzene and other toxins was leaked into the river, the city’s main source of water, after a series of explosions 10 days ago at a chemicals factory 200km upriver.
A mood of distrust and paranoia was spreading through the industrial city of 9m people, sharpened by the local government’s decision to turn off water supplies for four days for fear of an environmental catastrophe.
First of all...this could happen in ANY city in China. Factories here are built for production, not for safety. And when you get into chemical factories...I don't even want to think about it.
The other point that I think is important...we are hearing about this. The government has actually stepped up and said, 'this is a problem, we are cutting off the water.' And, in a round about sort of way...they are shouting out to the world...'we need help.' They obviously have no way of cleaning or containing this spill...and they are just waiting for it to flow downstream towards the city. But then...it did take them a while to actually get to this stage of action...
The growing unease was fuelled by the clumsy handling of the crisis by the city’s authorities, which at first said the water supply was being closed only for maintenance purposes. The lack of clear information spawned rumours of an imminent earthquake, which triggered panic buying of food and bottled water.
We'll have to wait and see the fallout from this. Will the governor of Harbin be purged from the party for taking such public actions? Will the city folk, join with village folk, and begin to raise questions about some of these unsafe factories in their province? Will there be any sort of investigation into the causes of the blast at the factory? An interesting tidbit to this is that you are dealing with two different provinces here. The explosion occurred in Jilin province, while Harbin is in neighboring Heilongjiang province.
And...to all those people thinking that I am a worry-wart about a possible panic if there is a pandemic strain of the avian flu in Chiner...well...look at the reaction of the people of Harbin to this issue and you tell me if I am over reacting.
Be sure to read this post from ESWN. It is by far, the most far reaching and best description of what is truly going on. It just gives you a sense of the build up to the panic. ESWN does a great job with the news here.
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