Officials in Russia's far east have asked China for information about a fire at a chemicals plant in a Chinese city near the two countries' shared border, Russian news agencies reported Tuesday.
The regional branch of Russia's emergency situations ministry sent the query through diplomatic channels after learning from media reports about the fire in the city of Jilin, a ministry spokesman said.
"After numerous requests, the far eastern regional centre (of the emergency ministry) sent a query to the Chinese general consulate in Khabarovsk on steps taken by China to deal with this fire," he told Russian news agencies.
The fire on Saturday was reported to have destroyed over 700 square metres (7,500 square feet) of a chemicals plant in Jilin, a city in northwestern China along the Songhua river, the spokesman said.
If the fire led to a chemical spill in the Songhua river, the slick would take 30 days to reach Khabarovsk, a Russian city of 600,000 near the Chinese border, said a Russian environmental official, Alexander Gavrilov.
However there was no information about chemicals spilling into the river, Gavrilov was quoted as saying by ITAR-TASS state news agency.
In 2005 an explosion at a chemical factory in China's heavily industrialised northwest dumped 100 tonnes of toxic chemicals into the Songhua, a tributary of the Amur River, which forms part of the Russian-Chinese border.
The spill, which caused a brief panic in Khabarovsk, spurred Beijing to announce plans to spend 1.2 billion dollars to clean up the Songhua.
Share This Article With Planet Earth
