'Decisive victory' call as quake lake shrinks

Source: Xinhua  |   2008-6-11  |     NEWSPAPER EDITION

CHINA'S main quake-formed lake at Tangjiashan in the southwestern Sichuan Province shrank drastically yesterday as muddy water flowed into low-lying areas.

About half of the lake's 250 million cubic meters of water has been discharged since the drainage started on Saturday morning, the Tangjiashan lake emergency rescue headquarters said.

Sichuan Communist Party chief Liu Qibao said yesterday afternoon that a "decisive victory" has been achieved in the lake drainage.

The quake relief headquarters of the State Council, or Cabinet, yesterday sent a congratulatory telegram to its Tangjiashan lake counterparts.

"After more than 10 consecutive days of hard work, you successfully drained the Tangjiashan quake lake and eliminated a huge threat of secondary disaster after the May 12 quake," the telegram said.

"Your work has ensured the people's security, avoided a huge loss and created a miracle in dealing with large quake-formed lakes."

A man-made sluice on the lake's dam was scoured to between 720 and 721 meters above sea level at 5pm, which means the influx and outflow of the lake "reached a balance," Tangjiashan experts said.

Drainage of the lake through the spillway speeded up to 6,420 cubic meters per second at 11:30am, before it slowed to a steady 3,888 cubic meters per second at 2:30pm.

The crest of the flood from the lake yesterday afternoon passed safely by downstream Mianyang City, where between 300,000 and 400,000 people were left, said Tan Li, the city's Communist Party chief and also its Quake Control and Relief Headquarters head.

More than 250,000 people in low-lying areas of Mianyang have been relocated under a plan based on the assumption that one-third of the lake volume breached the dam.

A few villages and farms in Jiangyou, a city sandwiched between Beichuan and Mianyang, were flooded, but seven towns along the river were not, said the city's Communist Party chief Yi Lin. There were no reports of casualties.