China "quake lake" fears force evacuation

BEICHUAN, China (Reuters) - China has evacuated more than150,000 people living below a swollen lake formed by thismonth's devastating earthquake amid fears it could burst andtrigger massive flooding, state media said on Wednesday.

And Tokyo's Jiji news agency said China had called on Japanto send its military to help with relief operations.

The Tangjiashan lake was created when landslides caused bythe May 12 earthquake blocked the Jianjiang river above thetown and county of Beichuan in mountainous Sichuan province,near the epicentre of China's most destructive earthquake indecades.

The official death toll from the 7.9 magnitude quake isalready more than 67,000 and is certain to rise further, withnearly 21,000 listed as missing. The quake injured nearly362,000 people and new aftershocks toppled 420,000 houses, manyalready uninhabitable, on Tuesday.

Downstream from the lake, residents were evacuatedovernight as engineers dug a diversion channel to preventflooding.

Up to 1.3 million people could be relocated if the lakebarrier collapses entirely, the China Daily said in its onlineedition.

Residents of Taihong looked on as the landslide demolishedtheir village. Han Haiyun, 60, was lucky to be away from herhouse at the time.

"I would never have thought something like this couldhappen in my life," she said. "...It's impossible to put intowords."

The water level in the lake, one of 35 "quake lakes" formedby the tremor and holding the volume of about 50,000Olympic-size swimming pools, has kept rising and the giantsluice would not be ready for another week, the China Dailyquoted experts as saying.

Immediately below the lake, the river runs in a loopbetween flattened high- and low-rise buildings, but threatenscommunities downstream which held evacuation drills on Tuesday.

Beijing on Wednesday allocated 200 million yuan (15 millionpounds) to Sichuan especially for defusing the threat of thequake lakes, 28 of which were still rated as dangerous, Xinhuanews agency said.

JAPANESE MILITARY

It also urged Japan to send its military to help withrescue operations, Jiji said, in what would be the first timeJapan's military has been deployed in China since the end ofWorld War Two.

Jiji quoted an unnamed Foreign Ministry official as sayingthat Japan had started to consider the request, while Kyodonews agency said China had sounded out Tokyo about sendingmilitary planes to help transport relief materials.

Sino-Japanese ties, long troubled by Japan's brutaloccupation of parts of China from 1931-45, have been on themend in recent months.

In Tianlin village, among the first to be flooded if thelake bursts, gongs and loudspeakers directed 680 villagers torush to surrounding hills within 20 minutes.

The lake water level was 727.09 metres on Tuesday, only24.21 metres below the lowest part of the unstable landslipbarrier.

Over the last century, about 5,500 people have been killedby flash floods when barrier lakes burst through dams made bylandslides, according to a 2004 paper by geologists at theChinese Academy of Sciences.

In 1786, the breach of a landslide dam 10 days after amajor earthquake killed about 100,000 people in Sichuan.

The region along the faultline is densely packed with dams,raising concerns that if either the quake lakes or the weakeneddams burst, the rush of water could cause other dams to fail.

The earthquake will make it difficult for China to meet itstarget of limiting inflation this year, a senior official saidbecause of the damage to agricultural production and heavyinvestment in reconstruction work.

Asked how difficult the earthquake would make it for Chinato meet its 2008 inflation target of 4.8 percent, Xu Xianchun,deputy head of the National Bureau of Statistics, saidrepeatedly: "Very hard."

Life for the millions of homeless is tough. Apart from thethreat of flooding disasters, officials are trying to stave offepidemics as the temperature rises and the rainy seasonapproaches.

Some 730 rural families in Jiangyou got 1 kg (2.2 lb) ofpork each on Tuesday after rescuers slaughtered six pigs, thefirst time they had had meat since the disaster struck, Chinesemedia said.

A massive relief effort, which involves providing food,tents and clothing for millions and the reconstruction ofhousing and infrastructure, is expected to take up to threeyears.

(Writing by Nick Macfie; Additional reporting by GuoShipeng and Beijing newsroom, and Teruaki Ueno in Tokyo;Editing by Alex Richardson)