China focuses on 'quake lake' amid aftershock trauma

CHINA: China pressed on Wednesday with frantic efforts to drain water from a huge "quake lake" threatening millions of people, as survivors of this month's devastating tremor braced for more aftershocks.

Rescue workers had evacuated 158,000 people in most imminent danger from a breaching of the lake, which was created when landslides blocked a river in the May 12 earthquake that devastated huge tracts of Sichuan province.

The disaster has left nearly 88,000 people dead or missing, while 15 million others have been displaced.

Although the Tangjiashan lake is little more than a fortnight old, it is already holding enough water to fill 50,000 Olympic swimming pools and could cause immense damage if it overflowed.

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

One of Wen's deputies, Vice Premier Hui Liangyu, confirmed the huge importance attached to the task after visiting the site on Tuesday.

"It is threatening millions of lives in the area downstream and any negligence will cause new disasters to people who have already suffered the quake," he said, according to the state-run Xinhua news agency Wednesday.

But the sense of urgency appeared not to have seeped down completely to grassroots' levels, with one official complaining local governments did not take the risk seriously enough.

"The speed of evacuation is somewhat slow," a local water resources official told AFP.

"Sometimes local governments think that evacuation is too much trouble, and they're betting it won't really be necessary, because they're not sure how big the risk might be," he said.

Water in the Tangjiashan lake is rising two metres (6.6 feet) every day and by Tuesday it was only 23 metres from the lowest level of the barrier, the China Daily said, citing Cai Qihua, a local water management official.

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. Chengdu, Wednesday, AFP