“The government warns that evacuations may be necessary because of the risk of flooding from a swelling lake formed north of Beichuan. Debris and landslides formed about 35 such lakes after the quake,” Don Lee reports in the Los Angeles Times:
The Chinese government warned today that as many 1.2 million residents may have to be evacuated because they could be inundated by a swelling “barrier lake” formed by the May 12 earthquake.
The notice was issued hours after a Russian helicopter transported heavy machines over mountains in the northern part of Sichuan province, and hundreds of Chinese soldiers carried in 10 tons of dynamite, to contend with the barrier lake at Tangjiashan, about 2 miles upstream from the town of Beichuan.
The afternoon announcement, broadcast on local television, made for another jittery day in Mianyang, a municipality of 5 million people that includes some of the hardest-hit areas of the earthquake, including Beichuan. Hopes of normality returning to the region had already been set back by Sunday’s magnitude 6 aftershock, centered north of here, which killed eight people and destroyed or damaged 270,000 houses.
