China evacuates 160 000 people

2008-05-28 07:26

Chengdu - China has evacuated nearly 160 000 people as a huge earthquake-created lake keeps rising towards bursting levels, state media said Wednesday, amid frantic efforts to ease the danger.

A total of 158 000 people had been moved by Tuesday midnight from areas immediately in front of Tangjiashan lake, which was formed when a landslide blocked a river in the devastating May 12 quake, the China Daily said.

Premier Wen Jiabao told a meeting of the cabinet's quake relief headquarters on Tuesday that handling this and three dozen other "quake lakes" in China's tremor-hit southwest was the "most pressing" task.

Water in the Tangjiashan lake is rising two metres every day and by Tuesday it was only 23 metres from the lowest level of the barrier, the paper said, citing Cai Qihua, a local water management official.

Millions at risk

The lake is holding enough water to fill 50 000 Olympic-size swimming pools, and if all of it comes gushing out, millions of people could be at risk.

More than 600 engineers and soldiers were at the lake working non-stop to dig a diversion channel, but they would not be able to complete the task until June 5, according to the China Daily.

Up to 1.3 million people will have to be relocated if the lake barrier is breached and officials have already started preparing for that contingency, it said.

The village of Tianlin, among the first to be flooded if the barrier bursts, was one of several communities holding evacuation drills on Tuesday, the paper reported.

People went through the village banging gongs and speaking into loudspeakers, directing the 680 residents to seek higher ground in 20 minutes - the time they will have to save themselves in the worst-case scenario.

The May 12 earthquake, which measured 8.0 on the Richter scale, flattened entire towns and villages across an area of mountainous Sichuan province the size of South Korea.

The death toll from the disaster has reached 67 183, with another 20 790 people missing, a government spokesperson said on Tuesday.

- AFP