Devecser, Hungary (CNN) -- Rescue workers searched Wednesday for six elderly people missing at Kolontar, one of three villages in southwest Hungary that was hit Monday by a wave of toxic red sludge from an alumina plant reservoir that burst.
Wearing chemical protection suits, the workers used metal sticks to poke through muck three-feet deep (1 meter) for the presumed victims, reported MTI, Hungary's official news agency.
At least 116 people were injured, eight of them seriously, when the mishap occurred Monday afternoon, the agency said. Most of them were flown to hospitals in the capital, Budapest.
The reservoir has been repaired and the flow from the pool has halted.
But the material that flowed out of the reservoir continued to pose a threat. On Wednesday, more than 500 National Disaster Management Authority staffers and soldiers and employees of Hungarian Aluminum Production and Trade Company (MAL), the company that owns the alumina plant's reservoir, were trying to halt the advance of the sludge before it reaches the Danube River's tributaries, said Jeno Lasztovicza, head of the defense committee, according to MTI.
The sludge had already reached the Marcal River, which flows into the River Raba, which empties into the Danube. It was expected to show up in the Danube as soon as this weekend, said Imre Szakacs, head of Gyor-Moson-Sopron County's defense authority, MTI said.
CNN
