The number of residents required to evacuate has risen to 15,000, as the plan to cap the leaking well at Gaoqiao Town in Kaixian County, Chongqing Municipality was suspended yesterday.

 

Local officials are trying to cope with the crisis but appear to be in dire need of supplies for those forced out of their homes in Kaixian County.

 

With only 790 quilts in stock, the county government has launched activities aimed at raising funds and materials for the evacuees. So far, 8,100 articles of clothing and 16,000 yuan (US$1,973) have been raised, according to Du Lianjian, chief of the Civil Affairs Bureau of Kaixian County.

 

Meanwhile, the plan to cap the Luojia No 2 well, which was scheduled for 2 PM, did not start by press time yesterday.

 

Rescue workers had stockpiled glutin near the well, which started leaking on Saturday. "They planned to mend the well with it," said Chen Cheng, an official with the Chongqing Armed Police Firefighters' Team.

 

Chen, who worked some 200 meters from the leaking well, said the air smelt of bad eggs. "It is the smell of sulfureted hydrogen. But monitoring equipment shows that the content of this substance is low," he told China Daily.

 

Yesterday morning, rescue workers ignited the leaking gas near the well in order to burn sulfureted hydrogen, a gas that killed 243 people in the December 2003 leakage in a well near Kaixian.

 

Workers began the second attempt to control the leak at around 6 PM on Wednesday, but the operation was suspended at 10 PM because the team encountered unknown conditions from inside the well.

 

The situation is complicated since there are leakages in the bottom of the well, in the pipeline and around the well, said experts dealing with the accident.

 

(China Daily March 31, 2006)