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Chinese battle against time to drain quake lake
2008-05-30
China's struggle to overcome earthquake devastation was compounded by confusion after an official denied a report that 1.3 million people would evacuate from a city threatened by a swelling "quake lake." The landslide-blocked river at Tangjiashan in southwest China's Sichuan province is the most pressing danger after an earthquake devastated the region on May 12. The official death toll from the quake is 68,858 and is sure to rise with 18,618 missing, and there is widespread worry that more than 30 landslide-blocked rivers could burst through and bring more havoc by flooding downstream towns and reservoirs. The official Xinhua news agency said Tan Li, Communist Party Secretary of Mianyang in the quake zone, ordered 1.3 million people living downstream from Tangjiashan to "evacuate to higher ground." But Zhou Hua, a Mianyang city official who is a spokesman for the lake relief effort, told Reuters the report was inaccurate. "There is a virtual training exercise scheduled for tomorrow to test our contingency plan to move that many people," he said. "But there is no public participation, and we see no reason at all to actually implement the plan at this stage." In villages outside Mianyang city there were no immediate signs of either mass panic or exodus. "The government and the army are working on it and won't let it burst," said Jin Dongsheng, a farmer in Qingyi town near the city. He and about 3,000 town residents had been moved about half an hour's walk uphill from homes close the river bank. Xinhua's Chinese-language service later also said there was merely a training exercise planned in Mianyang, a city of 5.3 million people including many in rural areas. At the unstable Tangjiashan lake, hundreds of troops have removed more than a third of the earth for a channel intended to ease pressure from the rising waters, Zhou said. Up to 190,000 residents downstream had moved to higher ground, usually hillsides close to where they were living before, to avoid a surge if the blockage suddenly gave way, he said. Xinhua said the water level was nearly 23 meters (75 feet) below the lowest point of the barrier, which experts have said could give way quickly once breached. Troops have also built escape paths in the event that happens. A Chinese meteorological authority official, Zhai Panmao, said the authority did not expect heavy rain in the area in the next 10 days. "We've adopted extremely important measures and are opening up a breach and so on," he said of the Tangjiashan build-up. "We have full confidence in solving this problem." Post-quake reconstruction work has only begun, with many displaced people facing a cramped, sweltering summer in tents. The government has received 35.28 billion yuan ($5.09 billion) in donations of cash and relief goods from home and abroad to date, officials said. But some aid pledged has yet to be received, and a deputy head of the Ministry of Civil Affairs disaster relief office, Pang Chenmin, warned tardy donors they could be publicly shamed. "The aid ought to be given to the recipient as promised and in a timely manner. If it needs to be delayed for a day or two, they can coordinate with the relevant department," Pang told a news conference in Beijing. "But if it is not given, the recipient has the right to go after payment, and inform the public in an appropriate way," Pang said, without elaborating. Japan had shelved plans for its military to fly tents and blankets to China, a Japanese government official said on Friday, after messages on Chinese Internet sites recalled Tokyo's World War Two atrocities in the country. CHILDREN Meanwhile, an official investigator pinpointed the poor design and construction of at least one of the many schools that collapsed during the quake, killing thousands of children. Domestic media reports compiled by Reuters put the combined toll from deaths of children and teachers in the rubble of schools at more than 9,000. The Chinese public has been outraged by the disproportionate number. An official investigator said one the schools that crumpled, the Juyuan Middle School, where hundreds of children died, was fatally weakened by poor design and materials. "There were certainly problems with site selection, the building's structure and structural features, the construction and materials," Chen Baosheng, an expert from Tongji University in Shanghai, told the Southern Weekend. The number of prospective orphans in the quake area has dropped dramatically as more children were reunited with their parents, Xinhua quoted local officials as saying. There were about 1,000 "unclaimed children" in Sichuan as of Wednesday, down from more than 8,000 immediately after the earthquake, Xinhua said, adding civil affairs authorities had been overwhelmed by calls seeking to adopt those quake orphans. (Additional reporting by Chisa Fujioka in Tokyo, Chris Buckley, Guo Shipeng and Beijing newsroom; Editing by Nick Macfie)
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