By Lindsay Beck
YOUXIAN, China (Reuters) - China has evacuated over 197,000people from an area that risks flooding by landslide- blockedrivers near the epicentre of this month's earthquake in Sichuanprovince, Xinhua news agency said on Saturday.
Shouting "evacuate! evacuate!", police with loudspeakersfanned through Youxian on the outskirts of Mianyang city, whichwas devastated by the May 12 quake.
The town was almost deserted, with shops shuttered andapartment buildings silent, as officials searched forstragglers in makeshift tarpaulin shelters erected by refugeeson the banks of the Fu River.
Residents of Youxian were ordered to move to higher groundin the hills around the town as hundreds of soldiers dug damsand channels upstream in an effort to reduce pressure on the Furiver and prevent it from overflowing, which could inundate thearea.
"We don't know how long they'll have to stay up there. Itdepends on the situation with the dam," a local policeofficial, who declined to be named, told Reuters.
The official death toll from the quake is 68,977 and isexpected to rise, with 17,974 people still missing. Officialshave said more than 30 landslide-blocked rivers could burst,flooding downstream towns and tent camps for refugees.
A major part of the construction effort to contain therivers, a sluice designed to discharge water from a lake atTangjiashan, has been completed, Xinhua quoted Yue Xi, deputychief of the water and electricity section of the People'sArmed Police Force, as saying.
He said the sluice was expected to drain water betweenSunday and Tuesday.
Xinhua reported that contingency plans provided for theevacuation of up to 1.3 million people, depending on how thedischarge of water proceeded.
Long convoys of trucks drove into the disaster area piledwith tents and other supplies for evacuees. An Airbus 380superjumbo, the world's largest passenger plane, flew into theregional city of Chengdu on Saturday with emergency supplies.
But Japan said it had shelved plans for its military to flyaid into the area because of China's historical sensitivities.It would have been the first deployment of the Japanesemilitary to China since the end of World War Two.
FAMILIES REUNITED
The movement of thousands of refugees through the disasterarea, some of them travelling not on official instructions butout of fear of aftershocks from the quake, continued to hinderthe work of reuniting families.
Over 6,000 lost children have been reunited with theirparents but 1,800 have still not been able to make contact withfamily or relatives, Xinhua reported.
At Youxian, thousands of evacuees were living in a park ona hillside above the town, in tents erected between amusementpark rides and statues of animals. They said they expected toreturn home after Tangjiashan was drained, but weren't surewhen that might happen.
"The officials know what's happening, but we don't reallyknow what's happening," said a middle-aged man named YaoJizhen, who had been living in the park for three days.
A banner reading "unite together, no difficulty can breakus" hung from a van nearby.
A health official at the park said there had been nooutbreaks of illness there, but the Sichuan provincial healthbureau has identified 205 cases of infectious diseasecontracted in the quake zone, including viral hepatitis,measles, and hand, foot and mouth disease, the official BeijingNews reported.
Inside Youxian, remaining residents packed up to leave.
"Today is the last day. We have to go immediately. They'vebeen a number of times to tell us," said Yang Zhonghai, a womanin her 50s who runs a small car wash, unpinning clothes fromher washing line.
A few people, already uprooted once by the disaster, weredefiant in the face of official orders for them to leave.
"For now we're not afraid. When the water starts to rise,we'll go," a middle-aged man surnamed Shen said outside histarpaulin shelter by the Fu River.
Elsewhere in China, the death toll from torrential rain in12 southern and eastern provinces, including Guizhou, Hunan andHubei, rose to 93 people, with 43 missing.
The floods have affected over 9 million people and causedeconomic losses of 5 billion yuan, China News Service quotedlocal authorities as saying.
(Reporting by Lindsay Beck; Writing by Andrew Torchia;Editing by Valerie Lee)
