CHENGDU - Workers have begun retrieving tanks of liquefied gas that floodwaters recently washed into the Yalong River, in Southwest China's Sichuan province.

Rescuers pull a man to safety as torrential rain in Yajiang county, Sichuan province, causes a severe flood and landslides on Wednesday. Liu Zhenxi / for China Daily

By presstime on Thursday, they had collected 103 of the 1,505 of the containers carried into the river by the flood

And the work to find and retrieve the remaining gas tanks continues, said Lu Cheng, an official with the information office of the Ganzi Tibetan autonomous prefecture.

On Tuesday evening and on Wednesday, Ganzi, the gateway to Tibet, was lashed by a downpour so severe that it led to floods and mudslides.

Around 1 pm on Thursday, a flood inundated a liquefied gas station in the prefecture's Yajiang county, picking up 1,505 tanks of liquefied gas and carrying them to the Yalong River, a branch of the Jinsha River in the upper reaches of the Yangtze.

Five hundred of the tanks were full, and the liquid inside them weighed from 4 kg to 12 kg, according to Ning Hong, deputy chief of the county's publicity department.

After the flood, the prefecture government organized workers to find and retrieve the tanks from places on the river near the Jinping, Guandi and Ertan hydropower stations.

One fear they had was that the tanks might explode if they came near fire.

At 9:25 am on Thursday, the first batch of roughly 10 tanks drifted toward the Jinping Hydropwer Station. By presstime on Thursday, 103 of the tanks had been retrieved, Lu said.

Most of them were empty and had taken on some water, he added.

The flooding and mudslides also damaged a national highway and Yajiang county's water and power supplies.

The Yajiang section of National Highway 318 was battered by falling debris around 6 am on Wednesday, said Liu Zhenxi, a member of the county fire brigade. He arrived with 15 of his colleagues at the scene of the disaster at 7 am, rescuing four tourists who had been stranded in a four-story building.

The landslides also damaged about 20 cars owned by local residents and tourists. No casualties have yet been reported, he said.

Since the disaster cut off National Highway 318 - the only passageway linking Yajiang with the outside - the county has become an "island". More than 10,000 residents and visitors are now stranded there.

Repairing the damaged section of the highway will take at least a week, Ning said.

The landslides also damaged power transmitters and blocked the intake of a local water plant, causing power to be lost and the local water supply to be cut off.

Ning said the water service will be restored by Thursday and the power supply by Friday.

He said county residents need not worry about whether they will have drinking water. A bottled-water plant, he explained, will make sure local stores are well-stocked with that necessity.