Gasoline leak strands 8000 in southwest China

About 8,000 people were stranded at Kunming Railway station after a gasoline leak near the Kunming-Shanghai railway line was found on Wednesday, the Kunming Railway Bureau said. About 2,000 tonnes of gasoline have leaked from a broken pipe after an accident at a construction site in southwest China’s Guizhou Province, rescuers said. The leak started on Wednesday after a construction tower collapsed late on Tuesday at a high-speed railway construction site in Pingba County of Anshun City, rescuers said. Trains from Kunming station traveling to Beijing, Shanghai, Nanjing, Jinan, Chongqing and Guilin via the Kunming-Shanghai line were either delayed or canceled due to the leak, according to China’s (Xinhua) News Agency. The pipe belongs to a branch of Sinopec, the country’s largest oil refiner. Local government authorities have cordoned off the leak site and laid pipelines to pump the oil leakage. Environmental personnel have started environmental monitoring at the site, where petrol fumes were pungent. The local government has taken emergency measures to stop the leak and evacuate residents from within a two-kilometer radius. Rail authorities have suspended train services from Anshun to the provincial capital of Guiyang. A provincial joint investigation team has been formed to look into the accident, and safety inspections are being carried out across the province.