More than 1 million warned they may have to evacuate China disaster

More than 1 million warned they may have to evacuate China disaster
The Associated Press , Chengdu Fri, 05/30/2008 6:43 PM World
More than 1 million people may have to urgently evacuate a Chinese valley that is being threatened with flooding from an earthquake-spawned lake, an emergency official warned Friday.
Authorities were preparing to run a drill starting Saturday to ensure 1.3 million people in dozens of villages in the Mianyang region could get out quickly if the lake breaks through a wall of debris that has clogged a river.
Hundreds of Chinese troops are working around the clock in the northern part of stricken Sichuan province to drain the Tangjiashan lake, which formed above Beichuan town when a hillside plunged into the river valley.
An official with the press office of Mianyang City Quake Control and Relief Headquarters, who would giver only her surname of Chen, said a report Friday by the official Xinhua News Agency that 1.3 million had been ordered to evacuate from the valley was wrong.
"Not all 1.3 million people will be actually evacuated," Chen told The Associated Press. "People will only be evacuated in case of the actual collapse of the whole bank."
On Saturday, officials will start a three-day drill that will test government communications systems to ensure that any evacuation order - if it comes - quickly filters down to residents in the valley.
Chen said 197,500 people in the valley are being moved to higher ground - about 30,000 more than previously announced - while the rest would be removed only if the dam breaks.
There was no sign that the dam formed by a landslide caused by the May 12 quake was about to burst on Friday, though officials say it could do so in coming days.
The soldiers were using 40 heavy earth-moving machines to dig drainage channels. Officials quoted in state media have not said how long the work would take.
Some 158,000 people living downstream from Tangjiashan lake have already been evacuated. Troops have sealed off Beichuan to the public.
Tangjiashan is the largest of more than 30 lakes that have formed behind landslides caused by the quake, which also weakened man-made dams in the mountainous parts of the disaster zone.
Outside the town of Hanwang, a brigade of 50 workers on Friday was busy mixing concrete to reinforce dikes around a dam on the Mianyuan River. The quake damaged the dam's embankments, and Hanwang faces inundation if the structures fail.
The government announced Friday that the confirmed death toll from China's worst disaster in three decades was 68,858, an increase of about 350 from a day earlier. Another 18,618 people were still missing. In the chaos after the magnitude 7.9 earthquake, which made 5 million homeless, many survivors were separated from their families.
Social workers have helped reunite more than 7,000 children separated from their parents by the earthquake in Sichuan, but some 1,000 remain unclaimed.
About 8,000 children were reported to be separated from their families in the first few days after the 7.9 magnitude quake, and that figure has now been drastically reduced to 1,000, said Civil Affairs Department official Ye Lu.
"We are still getting thousands of calls per week asking about how to adopt, but we are still hoping to find the parents of these 1,000 kids," Ye said.
Millions are living in tent camps or prefabricated housing being erected by troops, which were taking on the tone of new villages.
In Mianzhu, hospitals, schools and even a makeshift shopping mall had emerged in a tent camp, with stores selling shampoo, shoes, beer and clothes.
A mobile medical center on the back of a tractor-trailer rig was providing free eye exams. About 50 people - mostly senior citizens and children - lined up for the checkups.
"I've never had my eyes checked before. Even before the quake. This is the first time," said Yu Xiaoling, a 54-year-old farmer who lost her home in the quake.
But some residents were longing for the comforts of home.
"Life is really good here, but we don't have a TV. The things I miss most, though, are my stuffed animals. I lost them when our home collapsed," said Fang Ming, a 10-year-old girl standing outside her tent peeling an orange with the sharp edge of a chopstick.
China Red Cross sought to address concerns that some of the billions of yuan (billions of dollars) that has been donated to help quake victims could be siphoned off by corrupt officials by promising monthly audits of its relief operations.
"We will release the audit report every month," Red Cross deputy director Jiang Yiman told reporters in Beijing. "All money will be used for disaster relief, rescue and rebuilding efforts. No one should embezzle a penny."
Also Friday, government officials in Tokyo said Japan would not use military planes to deliver relief goods to China after Beijing voiced uneasiness over the idea.
Beijing had been in talks with Tokyo about using Japanese military planes to deliver aid, which could have become the first significant military dispatch between the two nations since World War II.
South Korean President Lee Myung-bak ended an official visit to China on Friday by making a short visit to Sichuan. He was the first foreign head of state to visit. (*) From. http://www.thejakartapost.com