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QINGLIAN, China: Over a million people living below China’s
dangerous “quake lake” were warned to prepare for the worst as
the enormous body of water kept rising on Thursday to near bursting
levels.
“We must prepare for dealing with the
worst-case scenario but strive for the best results,” said Water
Resources Minister Chen Lei, as two weeks of preparations were about
to be put to the test.
The lake was created in the May 12 earthquake
when a landslide blocked the Jianjiang River. The water masses have
been building up steadily since then.
The lake has become one of the most pressing
issues in the aftermath of the disaster in southwest China’s
mountainous Sichuan province, which killed more than 69,000 people
and left millions of others homeless.
The mud and rock dam were in danger of
collapsing under the pressure of the mounting body of water, and
seepage was already occurring, the official Xinhua news agency said,
quoting a spokesman for the “lake control headquarters.”
Officials are now pinning their hopes on a
channel dug by soldiers last week and designed to drain at least
enough water to contain the lake.
An estimated 1.3 million people live in areas
that could be inundated if the plan does not work, and many were
preparing mentally for having to leave.
“If it’s not one thing it’s the other. If
it’s not the earthquake, it’s the flood. But if they order us to
go, we’ll go,” said Liao Guangmei, a 60-year-old woman in
Mianyang, a city threatened by the lake.
Around Mianyang, storefronts had been sealed and
protected with sandbags as stripes of red paint sprayed on trees at
a height of about one meter (3 feet) indicated where the water would
reach if the lake were to burst.
On a road leading to the town of Qinglian near
the lake, a kilometer-long (0.6-mile-long) line of army trucks was
parked, many of them loaded with olive green fiberglass boats,
others with portable bridges.
Inside Qinglian, row after row of three- to
four-story apartment buildings were abandoned, while the entrances
to the communities had been sealed off with police tape.
-- AFP
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