DEVECSER, Hungary — The cracking wall of an industrial plant reservoir appeared on the verge of collapse late Saturday, and engineers were working to blunt a possible second wave of the caustic red sludge that has already deluged several towns in western Hungary and killed seven.
Residents of one nearby town were evacuated, others were ordered to be ready to evacuate, and everyone was bracing for a new onslaught of toxic material.
Engineers were building retaining walls around the previous breach in MAL Rt.’s storage pool and the weakened wall of the reservoir just outside Kolontar, the town hardest hit by the sludge flood. Kolontar’s nearly 800 residents were evacuated as a preventive measure.
The prime minister said experts had estimated that about 500,000 cubic meters of red sludge could escape from the reservoir if the wall collapsed, but they said exact figures were hard to calculate. The Associated Press
