Harbin announces city-wide water cut-off for four days

China Travel Services

BEIJING, Nov 21 -- The water supply throughout the northeast city of Harbin will be cut off for some four days starting Tuesday, local news media reported late Monday.

According to reports on northeast.cn, the municipal government of Harbin announced the decision on Monday, citing an overhaul of the entire water pipepline system in the city scheduled to start from noon Nov 22, 2005.

The concurrent water cut-off will last for around four days in all parts of the city, the exact date and time of the resume of water supply being still pending, northeast.cn quoted the announcement as saying.

Panicked residents in the city rushed to fill their buckets, pots, cups and anything else they could lay their hands on when the rumor began to spread early Monday, local media reported. Bottled water, soft drinks and beers had all ran out in local supermarkets and stores by the evening.

The reports did not give details as to the reason of the sudden overhaul of water supply in the capital city of northeast China's Heilongjiang Province, which has a population of more than 6,000,000.