MIANYANG, China — Chinese authorities prepared Saturday to drain a swelling lake formed by a devastating earthquake, completing work on a drainage channel to divert water that threatens hundreds of thousands downstream.
Officials are expected to discharge floodwater from the lake into the channel between today and Tuesday, the official Xinhua News Agency reported, quoting Yue Xi, deputy chief of the water and electricity section of the People’s Armed Police.
The lake, called Tangjiashan, formed above Beichuan town in the Mianyang region of Sichuan province when a hillside plunged into a river valley during the May 12 quake.
Chinese authorities had evacuated nearly 200,000 people by early Saturday and warned more than 1 million others to be ready to leave quickly if the lake floods.
Meanwhile, a military transport helicopter carrying 10 people injured in the quake and four crew members crashed Saturday in Sichuan province in fog and strong turbulence, Xinhua said.
There was no immediate word on survivors. A search-and-rescue mission was underway, the news agency said today.
The confirmed death toll from China’s worst quake in three decades was raised Saturday to 68,977, an increase of about 120 people from a day earlier. Another 17,974 people were still missing, said the State Council, or Cabinet. The daily increase was the smallest since the government started announcing death tolls shortly after the quake hit.
State television showed bulldozers and other heavy earth-moving equipment working on the water diversion channel. It did not show how far up the landslide the channel had been carved.
Xinhua said Tan Li, the Communist Party chief of Mianyang, had issued another order for all 1.3 million people in the area to be evacuated if “the barrier of the quake lake fully opens” and floods the area.
There was no sign that the banks of the lake were about to burst. Troops have sealed off Beichuan to the public.
Tangjiashan is the largest of more than 30 lakes that have formed behind landslides caused by the quake, which also weakened man-made dams in the mountainous parts of the disaster zone.
Millions of people in Sichuan are already living in tent camps and prefabricated housing, which have taken on the tone of new villages.
Xinhua also reported that President Hu Jintao arrived Saturday to check on relief efforts in Shaanxi province. He was shown on state TV at a shelter talking to children who had been left homeless by the earthquake.
