Report from Financial Times (24/11/2005):

A deadly 80km toxic slick on Thursday reached the outskirt of Harbin, a Chinese city of 9m people, after it made its way down the Songhua river and sending thousands of residents fleeing.
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.
Thousands of people living in Harbin jammed its railway station and booked out all available flights as the toxins threatened to poison the north-eastern industrial city¡¯s water supplies.
According to Reuters, local officials said the toxic slick was expected to pass through Harbin¡¯s water supply inlet on Thursday and the city itself on Saturday. They also told residents to keep away from the river and to watch out for symptoms of benzene poisoning.
A mood of distrust and paranoia was spreading through Harbin, sharpened by the local government¡¯s decision to turn off water supplies for fear of an environmental catastrophe.
Trains leaving the city have already sold out until the weekend. All 42 flights from the city¡¯s airport were also full yesterday.
Officials at the railway station and airport said the scenes resembled the crush during the Chinese New Year holiday, when travellers overload the public transport system in order to return home to their families.
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.
¡°I am fleeing,¡± said Pang Shijun, a 50-year-old man among the crowds at the central railway station. He said his wife had already left the night before to go to the nearby city of Jixi. ¡°I just do not trust the government to provide true information on this.¡±
Only on Wednesday did the state authorities finally give a detailed account of the pollution and risks to the water supply in a city which is famous for its breweries, among other industries.
Anheuser-Busch, the US brewer which has a plant in the city, issued a statement saying the water shutdown had ¡°not significantly affected¡± its beer production in Harbin.
The company said its brewery was using ¡°100 per cent well water¡± from deep aquifers to produce its beer, adding that it was supplying Harbin¡¯s citizens with water from its own supplies and making tankers available.
The Harbin crisis has underlined China¡¯s vulnerability to environmental shocks and industrial accidents and heightened concern in Beijing, which has long worried about unrest from environmental catastrophes.
After a series of contradictory statements by the city and PetroChina, the overseas-listed energy giant which runs the plant where the accident occurred, Beijing¡¯s environmental watchdog confirmed the Songhua river had been contaminated.
The State Environment Protection Agency said an 80km stretch of the river had been polluted by benzene, a carcinogen used in the manufacture of plastics, detergents, pesticides and other chemicals. Some sections of the river contained benzene levels more than a 100 times higher than national safety levels.
The accident occurred at a plant adjacent to the river near the city of Jilin. The polluted portion of the river is expected to arrive in Harbin this morning and take about 40 hours to pass by. A city spokesman, quoted by the official Xinhua news agency, said 15 hospitals had been put on standby to deal with cases of poisoning. Schools have been closed until further notice.