Songhua scare sets off bottle-water panic buying
Source: Xinhua/Shanghai Daily |
July 30, 2010, Friday
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Print Edition
Print Edition
A WOMAN in Jilin City told The Beijing News on Wednesday she witnessed countless blue iron buckets floating on Songhua River, including some emitting white smoke and irritating odors.
The woman, surnamed Liu, said water supplies were cut when the buckets were seen in the river, which triggered panic buying among local residents who thought the Songhua River had been contaminated.
Liu said she rushed to local stores for bottled water at 8pm, but it had already been sold out.
She complained that some vendors close to the city government raised the prices for bottled water three or four times.
Meantime, panic buyers in Harbin City, capital of downstream Heilongjiang Province, flocked to local supermarkets for bottled water yesterday.
Many of the shoppers had nothing in their carts but boxes of bottled water.
Shelves emptied in seconds after being replenished, but a shop assistant in an RT-Mart store told the local website portal Dbw.cn that the panic was unnecessary because the store had plenty of stock.
To help allay the anxiety, the governments of Harbin and Jiamusi cities along the Songhua River said domestic water supplies no longer came from the river.
At the end of last year, the city closed the water intake from the Songhua River and started to take water from Mopan Mountain, said Ji Quwen, deputy general manager of Harbin City Water Supply and Drainage Group.
However, sales of bottled water surged by 15 percent to 20 percent from late Wednesday to yesterday morning.
"I bought six boxes of water from the supermarket just in case," said taxi driver Liu Tao, 34. "It's summer, after all. We need water."
The woman, surnamed Liu, said water supplies were cut when the buckets were seen in the river, which triggered panic buying among local residents who thought the Songhua River had been contaminated.
Liu said she rushed to local stores for bottled water at 8pm, but it had already been sold out.
She complained that some vendors close to the city government raised the prices for bottled water three or four times.
Meantime, panic buyers in Harbin City, capital of downstream Heilongjiang Province, flocked to local supermarkets for bottled water yesterday.
Many of the shoppers had nothing in their carts but boxes of bottled water.
Shelves emptied in seconds after being replenished, but a shop assistant in an RT-Mart store told the local website portal Dbw.cn that the panic was unnecessary because the store had plenty of stock.
To help allay the anxiety, the governments of Harbin and Jiamusi cities along the Songhua River said domestic water supplies no longer came from the river.
At the end of last year, the city closed the water intake from the Songhua River and started to take water from Mopan Mountain, said Ji Quwen, deputy general manager of Harbin City Water Supply and Drainage Group.
However, sales of bottled water surged by 15 percent to 20 percent from late Wednesday to yesterday morning.
"I bought six boxes of water from the supermarket just in case," said taxi driver Liu Tao, 34. "It's summer, after all. We need water."
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