Quake-lake level still rising

Updated 14.35 Sun Jun 08 2008

Keywords: lake, flood, China, earthquake

The water level is still rising in a lake created by last month's earthquake in China, and is threatening to unleash a devastating flood.

Landslides blocked the Tongkou River in the 7.9 magnitude quake, creating the biggest of more than 30 "quake lakes" formed by a disaster which killed 69,000 people.

Troops have fired missiles and used dynamite to help blast out a sluice channel to drain off a huge volume of water which has built up behind the mud-and-rock dam

Worried that the dam at the Tangjiashan quake lake in the Sichuan province could now burst in a sudden rush, officials have evacuated more than 250,000 people from areas downstream.

Troops have fired missiles and used dynamite to help blast out a sluice channel to drain off a huge volume of water which has built up behind the mud-and-rock dam.

The lake's water level was 741.82 meters above sea level at midday on Sunday, 1.45 meters higher than the sluice, state media reported.

General Ge Zhenfeng, deputy chief of the General Staff of the People's Liberation Army (PLA), said: "Generally speaking, construction of the lake's drainage projects is going well, but the lake remains dangerous for hundreds of thousands of people downstream. It will take us a few days to eliminate the potential danger of the lake."

Rao Xiping, head of the Beichuan hydro-meteorological station, said the lake dam remained stable.

"We have found no obvious expansion of the sluice holes nor fissures in the dam. There is no sign of dam collapse either," he said.