Chinese battle quake lake amid official confusion

MIANYANG, China (Reuters) - China's struggle to overcomeearthquake devastation has been compounded by conflictingofficial claims about plans to evacuate 1.3 million people in acity threatened by a swelling "quake lake".

Facing outrage from grieving parents, the government,meanwhile, vowed to punish anyone responsible for schoolbuildings that collapsed in the quake, killing thousands ofchildren.

The landslide-blocked river at Tangjiashan in southwestChina's Sichuan province is the most pressing danger after themagnitude 7.9 quake struck on May 12.

The official death toll is 68,858 and is sure to rise with18,618 missing, and there is widespread worry that more than 30landslide-blocked rivers could burst and bring havoc todownstream towns and tent camps.

The state Xinhua news agency said Tan Li, Communist Partychief of Mianyang in the quake zone, ordered 1.3 million peopledownstream from Tangjiashan to "evacuate to higher ground".

But Zhou Hua, a Mianyang official who is a spokesman forthe lake relief effort, told Reuters that report was"mistaken".

"There is a virtual training exercise scheduled fortomorrow to test our contingency plan to move that manypeople," he said.

"The exercise will test the command system from the top tothe very bottom with community teams, but it's a governmentinternal exercise that won't mobilise the public....Don'tconfuse practice with a real emergency. This is not."

Xinhua's Chinese-language service also said it was atraining exercise. But the service's later English-languagereport appeared adamant that more than training was afoot.

"The mass evacuation, dubbed a 'drill' by local governmentofficials, is said to make way for a possible flood dischargingoperation set for the weekend," Xinhua said.

In villages outside Mianyang city there were no immediatesigns of either mass panic or exodus.

"The government and the army are working on it and won'tlet it burst," said Jin Dongsheng, a farmer in Qingyi town nearthe city. He and about 3,000 town residents had been movedabout half an hour's walk uphill from homes close the riverbank.

RECONSTRUCTION

At the unstable Tangjiashan lake, hundreds of troops haveremoved more than a third of the earth for a channel intendedto ease pressure from the rising waters, Zhou said.

Up to 190,000 residents downstream had moved to higherground, usually hillsides close to where they were livingbefore, to avoid a surge if the blockage suddenly gave way, hesaid.

Xinhua said the water level was nearly 23 metres (75 feet)below the lowest point of the barrier, which experts have saidcould give way quickly once breached.

A Chinese meteorological authority official, Zhai Panmao,told a news conference that the authority did not expect heavyrain in the area in the next 10 days.

"We have full confidence in solving this problem," he saidof the Tangjiashan build-up.

Post-quake reconstruction work has only begun, with manydisplaced people facing a cramped, sweltering summer in tents.

The government has received 35.28 billion yuan (2.6 billionpounds) in donations of cash and goods from home and abroad todate, officials said.

But some aid pledged has yet to be received, and a deputyhead of the Ministry of Civil Affairs disaster relief office,Pang Chenmin, warned tardy donors they could be publiclyshamed.

CHILDREN DEAD

Meanwhile, an official investigator pinpointed the poordesign and construction of at least one of the many schoolsthat collapsed during the quake, killing thousands of children.

Domestic media reports compiled by Reuters put the combinedtoll from deaths of children and teachers in quake-hit schoolsat more than 9,000.

The Chinese public has been especially outraged by schoolbuildings that fell while nearby apartments and governmentoffices survived.

An official investigator said one of the schools thatcrumpled, the Juyuan Middle School, where hundreds of childrendied, was fatally weakened by poor design and materials.

"There were certainly problems with site selection, thebuilding's structure and structural features, the constructionand materials," Chen Baosheng, an expert from Tongji Universityin Shanghai, told the Southern Weekend.

With growing threats of protests and lawsuits, thegovernment said grieving parents should be comforted andlawbreakers behind shoddy schools punished.

"If illegalities are found in design and construction, theymust be investigated and punished according to the law," ameeting of senior quake-response officials in Beijing ordered,according to state television news.

(Additional reporting by Chisa Fujioka in Tokyo, ChrisBuckley, Guo Shipeng and Beijing newsroom; Writing by ChrisBuckley; Editing by Nick Macfie and David Fogarty)