Emergency response went into effect in the Upper Egyptian governorate of Sohag Thursday morning after a fuel barge capsized in the Nile near the city of Naga Hammadi Wednesday night. The alert was made in anticipation of the possibility that the spill will flow downstream.
Secretary for Sohag governorate Alaa Yassin said authorities have installed check points in Balyana in order to scan the waters. A team of chemists and technicians from the province’s water and drainage company are testing water samples every two hours to detect contamination, he added.
Yassin speculated the spill might evaporate before it reaches Sohag City because of the long distance it must travel. The large of amount of islands in that segment of the Nile will also impede the fuel's progress.
Yassin said governorate officials managed to contain an earlier spill from a barge that was providing fuel to machines at the sugar factory in Naga Hammad on Tuesday night.
On the 11 September, ِanother barge, carrying 244 tons of fuel, sank while docking at the naval stream north of Aswan. The sinking resulted in a massive oil spill.
Translated from the Arabic Edition.
