CHINA:CHINESE RELIEF workers evacuated 150,000 people living near the Tangjiashan "quake lake" yesterday amid fears that the reservoir, formed by landslides after the Sichuan earthquake two weeks ago, could burst its banks and engulf the residents downstream.
Ever since the earthquake tore through the southwestern Chinese province, challenges have continued to mount for the thousands of soldiers and relief workers trying to help the five million people displaced by the 7.9-magnitude quake.
So acute is the problem that China has even asked the Japanese army for help. This would be the first time Japanese soldiers have been deployed in China since the second World War, or the "War of Resistance against Japanese Aggression", as it is known in China.
The Japanese army will fly tents and blankets to China after Beijing made its request.
China is struggling to reopen roads in the stricken area and has warned that rebuilding quake-hit Sichuan will be a long and difficult process.
The massive relief effort for the areas struck by the quake on May 12th involves providing food, tents and clothing for millions and the reconstruction of housing and infrastructure. It could be three years before parts of Sichuan return to something approaching normality.
"Due to the immense magnitude of loss resulting from the quake, production recovery and reconstruction of the quake-hit region will be arduous in the near future," the National Development and Reform Commission, China's top economic planning body, said in a statement.
The Tangjiashan lake was created when landslides caused by the quake blocked the Jianjiang river above the devastated town and county of Beichuan in mountainous Sichuan, near the epicentre of what had been China's most destructive earthquake in over three decades.
Soldiers have been blasting the banks of "quake lakes" with dynamite in some places, while downstream from the Tangjiashan lake, engineers dug a diversion channel to prevent flooding.
The volume of water in Tangjiashan lake would be equivalent to that of 50,000 Olympic-size swimming pools, and the levels keep rising. If the lake barrier gives way, 1.3 million people may need to be relocated.
There are hundreds of dams in this seismic region, posing a real threat in the immediate sense to rescuers and residents, and in the longer term to redevelopment plans.
The official death toll from the quake is already more than 68,000 and sure to rise further, with nearly 20,000 listed as missing.
Aftershocks this week toppled 420,000 houses, although most had already been damaged beyond repair by the quake.
"The quake's massive destruction, huge casualties and the extremely difficult relief work are all very rare in history. It has caused great losses to human lives and property. We are deeply saddened," President Hu Jintao told a visiting delegation of Taiwanese politicians, in a rare expression of frankness about such sensitive affairs of state.
The government has set aside 200 million yuan (€18 million) especially for defusing the threat of Sichuan's quake lakes, 28 of which were still rated as dangerous, Xinhua news agency reported.
The appeal to Tokyo, while surprising, is well within reason given the growing diplomatic closeness of late between the two old enemies.
Sino-Japanese ties, long troubled as a result of Japan's brutal occupation of parts of China from 1931 to 1945, have been on the mend in recent months.
Japan sent a group of rescue workers and a medical team to Sichuan province shortly after the disaster.