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By 7:30 p.m. Thursday, nearly 1,500 barrels, empty or filled with chemicals, had been recovered.
Emergency workers on speed-boats and ferries were using poles and steel nets to collect floating barrels at a port in Yushu City, on the lower reaches of the Songhua River. Three cranes and two fire trucks were assisting on the riverbank.
The retrieved barrels in Yushu have been stored in tents, Chen Rongju, head of the city's work safety watchdog, said.
The barrels tumbled into the Wende River on Wednesday and then floated into the Songhua River after floods broke through storage facilities at two chemical factories -- Jilin Xinyaqiang Biochem Co. Ltd. and Jilin Zhongxin Group -- in Jilin City.
Of the 3,000 chemical-filled barrels, about 2,500 contained trimethyl chloro silicane -- a colorless flammable liquid -- while 500 contained hexamethyl disilazane, also a colorless liquid, officials said.
"The chemical would only cause an explosion after fully reacting with oxygen under a condition of high temperature. In this case, the chemical would not cause havoc on the river unless a large number of containers were damaged at one time," said Sun Lili, deputy general engineer with the Design and Research Institute of Petrochemical Technology in Jilin Province.
Workers are collecting the barrels at eight points on the river as officials vowed to stop the barrels from entering downstream Heilongjiang Province.