Chinese military engineers are prepared to dynamite a potentially dangerous "quake lake" created when landslides dammed a river after this month's earthquake in which more than 65,000 people were killed, state-run media reported Monday.
A Chinese helicopter prepares to airlift a bulldozer to help with clearing quake landslides.
Authorities are concerned the swelling lake will burst as water from the Jianhe river in Beichuan county in China's southwestern Sichuan province rises behind the earthquake-created dam, the Xinhua news agency reported.
"The lake ... may cause a devastating flooding if the barrier bursts," Xinhua said. Authorities want to control the flow of water -- rather than have the dam give way all at once -- by creating a spillway.
Helicopters transported military experts armed with dynamite and heavy equipment to the site Monday morning. About 1,800 Chinese soldiers and police were already at the site.
More than 30 of the so-called quake lakes were created by the 7.9-magnitude quake that devastated the region on May 12.
Chinese officials Monday emphasized that the country's one-child policy allows families with a child killed, severely injured or disabled to have another child.
A strong aftershock on Sunday killed at least eight people, injured about 1,000 others and destroyed more than 70,000 homes in China's Sichuan, Gansu and Shaanxi provinces.
The official toll from the original quake has now risen to 65,080, China's Civil Affairs Ministry said Monday. Another 360,058 people were injured and 23,150 are missing, according to the ministry.
The worst damage occurred in Sichuan, which has experienced thousands of aftershocks over the past two weeks, but Sunday's -- which the U.S. Geological Survey measured at a 6.0 magnitude -- was the strongest since a 5.8-magnitude tremor shook the region a day after the initial quake.
Shaanxi experienced the highest death toll as a result of the aftershock, with four people losing their lives. One each died in Sichuan and Gansu.
The aftershock damaged more than 200,000 other homes, according to state media. It also damaged another dam, cutting off several more roads in the region.
Sunday's aftershock was felt in Chengdu, one of the largest cities in the Sichuan province and about 240 km (150 miles) from the aftershock's epicenter. A CNN employee, on the 24th floor of a high-rise hotel, reported that the building swayed.
At a news conference Sunday, a Civil Affairs Ministry official said rescue workers had pulled 6,537 people alive from the rubble of the earthquake.
An official from the Ministry of Water Resources said at the same briefing that 69 dams damaged by the quake were in danger of bursting in Sichuan province.
The government estimates that 45 million people, mostly in the Sichuan province, were affected by the earthquake and that 5 million were left homeless.
|