More than a million people downstream still under threat
Soldiers fired missiles at a man-made channel yesterday in an effort to speed up the flow of water from a dangerous lake created by the May 12 earthquake in Sichuan province .
The level of the Tangjiashan 'quake lake' in Beichuan county continued to rise even after it started to drain on Saturday, state media said. The lake threatens more than a million people downstream, and about 250,000 people around the city of Mianyang have already been evacuated.
As of late afternoon yesterday, the water level of the lake stood at nearly 742 metres, 2 metres higher than the run-off channel, state television said. The water has been rising 4-5cm an hour since Saturday morning.
Soldiers gave Mother Nature a push by firing several missiles to break up boulders. The flow increased noticeably after the missiles found their target, and water was draining at a rate of about 30 cubic metres per second as of late afternoon yesterday.
Rainfall, landslides and aftershocks could present a problem for draining the lake, which engineers hope to accomplish in a controlled way, Minister of Water Resources Chen Lei said.