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 Firefighters work to contain gas and extinguish smoke after a chlorine leak from a swimming pool in Guangyuan city in Southwest China's Sichuan province on Monday evening prompted the evacuation of hundreds of local residents. Tang Junyong/ China News Service |
Chengdu - Dozens of people in Guangyuan, Sichuan province, were poisoned in the wake of a chlorine gas leak on Monday night and Tuesday morning.
All received treatment at a local hospital, however, and no one was seriously harmed, said Wang Zhu, a press officer in the northernmost Sichuan city.
At about 10 pm on Monday, officials said, residents along the densely populated Xifeng Road sensed a pungent odor and a gas that irritated their throats, eyes and skin.
By 10:30 pm, 50 policemen and firefighters arrived and discovered a chlorine leaking from a rusty tank weighing 250 kilograms in a swimming pool on Xifeng Road.
Police set up a cordon on both ends of the road and evacuated residents by knocking on doors and through the use of loudspeakers.
In all, some 1,000 residents were evacuated over the next half-hour, said Zhao Lianhong, a pensioner who lived in an apartment nearby.
As toxic chloride smoke kept spreading, police enlarged the cordon and used more than 250 kg of caustic soda to neutralize the smoke, said Yu Jian, head of the local police authority.
Police used squirt guns to dilute the smoke, while sealing the chloride tanker in water mixed with caustic soda.
By 5:30 am on Tuesday, the caustic soda water extinguished the chloride gas, and employees from the environmental protection bureau soon conducted a test and found no remaining traces of toxic gas, Yu said.
At around 6 am, residents on the Xifeng Road started returning home because they no longer sensed the chloride gas, Zhao told China Daily.
Dozens of residents affected by the toxic gas were sent to local hospitals for treatment.
They had symptoms including sore eyes, throats and skin, but none of these conditions was regarded as life threatening, Wang said.
He refused to disclose the exact number of people hospitalized as a result of chloride gas poisoning.
According to Yu, managers of the swimming pool purchased 180 kg of liquefied chloride in 1995 to disinfect the pool.
Before the leakage, there was 4.5 kg of chloride kept in the tanker. The rusting of the tanker itself had caused the leakage, Yu said.
China Daily
