Authorities in Chongqing Municipality, southwest China, decided on Monday night to mobilize "Plan B" to cap the leaking gas well after "Plan A" proved ineffective.

According to the second plan, workers will pour slurry and cement into the underground through the mouth of the Luojia No.2 well located in Gaoqiao Town, Kaixian County, said an official with the southwest branch of the well's owner China National Petroleum Corporation (CNPC).

However, the official did not exclude the possibility of carrying out a third plan if the second fails as well.

The well was found to be leaking on Saturday. No casualties have been reported.

By yesterday morning, more than 10,000 local residents inside the danger zone, which was within a 0.5-kilometer radius of the leaking well, had been evacuated. Further arrangements were made to take more residents out of Kaixian County in buses, according to Jiang Youyi, Kaixian Party chief.

Temporary accommodations have been set up in government auditoriums and schools. The county government has provided evacuees with quilts, instant noodles and mineral water, Jiang said.

He said that most of the evacuated local residents were calm.

Fifteen-year-old Liao Qingrong, recounted the time when her family found out about the leak.

"I was watching television at home around 9 o'clock on Saturday morning when my parents shouted that the well was in flames, and that we must flee immediately," she told China Daily.

"Is another incident like that of December 2003 happening when a leak caused the death of 243 people near the village? I asked myself. But I didn't smell the gas like I did in the eruption of December 2003," she recalled.

She was immediately evacuated with her mother and younger brother and has been sleeping in the county government hall since Saturday night.

"The county government provides us with meals in nearby restaurants. More than 1,000 of us are currently living in the hall," she said.

Liao was looking forward to returning home and resuming her study at school. "We don't know when we can return home but everybody tells me that it won't be much longer."

Although local residents didn't report any strange smells near the site of the leak, departments in charge of environmental protection in Chongqing Municipality, which has Kaixian under its administration, have set-up seven stations to monitor the situation within a two-kilometer radius of the mouth of the leaking well.

(Xinhua News Agency, China Daily March 28, 2006)

 

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