China Averts Earthquake Lake Catastrophe

Churning waters poured through a man-made sluice to engulf low-lying, empty towns devastated by last month's massive earthquake as China declared victory Tuesday in its fight to drain a quake-formed lake that threatened more than a million people living downstream.

Sichuan province's top leader, local Communist Party chief Liu Qibao, called it a "decisive victory" after waters gushed from the lake, the largest of 30 created by the quake that killed nearly 70,000 people, the official Xinhua News Agency said.

Xinhua said more than half of the 8.8 billion cubic feet of water in the Tangjiashan lake had been drained off by early evening, easing pressure on the natural dam formed when the May 12 quake triggered a landslide of mud, rocks and debris.

More than 250,000 people living downstream had already moved to high ground due to concerns that the barrier holding back the lake could break. A total of about 1.3 million people live in the downstream area.

Fearful that the possible deluge would endanger refugees and residents, China ordered soldiers and police to work nonstop for four days to dig a diversion channel and blast away boulders and large debris with dynamite, bazookas and recoilless guns to speed up the drainage.

State broadcaster CCTV showed water flowing quickly out of the lake, flooding low-lying areas of the devastated town of Beichuan just below. Residents from the area had been evacuated days earlier.

The swirl of muddy water roaring past towns and villages swept along trees, barrels, television sets, refrigerators "and the occasional dead bodies of quake victims," Xinhua reported.

Towns downstream remained on alert for possible flooding in case the level of water breached unstable banks.

"The best situation is to completely clear out the water in the Tangjiashan lake before the flood season. The water level is likely to linger around 2,300 feet for a period of time," Water Resources Minister Chen Lei said, according to Xinhua.

Flood waters seeped into riverside houses in the largely evacuated town of Qinglian, a resident said.

"Everybody feels lucky that it didn't submerge the streets and the neighborhood," said Wu Zhenxing.

In the city of Mianyang, where residents had been practicing evacuation drills, the Fujiang river flowed high and swift under a key railway bridge, but stayed within its banks.

Rain was forecast for the Mianyang area starting Tuesday night, likely raising swells in the area's steep mountain streams.

Also Tuesday, searchers discovered the wreckage of a helicopter that crashed deep in the mountains May 31 while ferrying people injured in last month's quake, Xinhua said.

The remains of the five-person crew and 12 quake victims were found at the crash site near the town of Yingxiu, it said. The wreckage was spread over a wide area of deep vegetation.

The 7.9 magnitude quake on May 12 killed 69,146 people, and 17,516 are still missing, the government said late Tuesday. About 5 million people are homeless.

On Tuesday, staff at Wolong, the world's most famous panda reserve, buried a 9-year-old panda who was killed in a landslide triggered by the quake.

Earlier, China's security czar stressed the need to maintain order amid a struggle to shelter the millions left homeless by the quake and scattered protests over alleged corruption linked to shoddy school construction.

Zhou Yongkang demanded police and legal staff "solve disputes and help maintain social stability," the Communist Party's official newspaper, The People's Daily, said in a front-page report Tuesday.

Zhou, a member of the party's powerful nine-member Politburo Standing Committee, visited hard-hit regions for five days, according to the reports.

While there have been no reports of major unrest, refugees have rioted on at least one occasion over misused aid. Parents of children killed in schools have demanded officials answer for alleged corruption in the buildings' construction.

At least 15 Sichuan officials have also been removed from their posts for mishandling relief work. Another 13 have been given other forms of administrative punishment.

On Tuesday, the government vowed to carry out earthquake-resistance checks of all school buildings nationwide before Sept. 1, the beginning of the new school semester, Xinhua said.

Brick school buildings built before 2001 would get extra attention in the exam, according to the notice by the ministries of education and housing. Every dormitory, cafeteria and public bathroom, from the kindergarten level through university-level, would also be checked, it said. Any building found to be potentially dangerous would be banned and added to a local database.