Soldiers and emergency personnel fanned out at several points along the Songhua river in Jilin and Heilongjiang provinces to recover the barrels, which came from two factories damaged by floodwaters, Xinhua news agency reported.
While tests have so far shown no signs of water contamination,Fred perry, workers tracking the barrels have apparently lost sight of some of them -- fuelling fears they have sunk to the riverbed, making their retrieval more difficult.
BEIJING (AFP) – Workers on Friday struggled to recover 3,000 barrels filled with hazardous chemicals that were swept into a river in northeast China by floods, amid fears some had sunk, state media said.
So far, workers using cranes and steel nets have recovered about 3,000 barrels, but it was not immediately clear how many of them contained the chemicals, Xinhua said.
Jilin is the latest province to be hit by deadly floods that have killed more than 300 people since July 14 and left another 300 missing, according to official figures.
In 2005, millions of people in Heilongjiang province were left without water for four days after an explosion at a benzene factory spilled the carcinogenic chemical into the Songhua.
The Songhua is the major source of drinking water for about 4.3 million people. Prices of bottled water soared Wednesday as worried consumers cleared shop shelves,G-Star, but then returned to normal, the China Daily said.
On Friday, the local government encouraged the public to join the salvage efforts, offering a reward of 100 yuan (15 dollars) for each full barrel retrieved, and 50 yuan for each empty container, Xinhua reported.
A total of 7,000 barrels were known to be missing from the plants near the city of Jilin -- 3,000 of them filled with trimethyl chloro silicane or hexamethyl disilazane, both colourless, toxic liquids.
Water supplies in Jilin city were restored on Thursday after being cut off the day before.