China Rushing to Fix Dams in Earthquake Zone

Thousands of Chinese troops rushed Wednesday to plug cracks in a dam in earthquake-hit Sichuan province but experts later said the site was safe. Meanwhile, Chinese rescuers funneled relief supplies to the epicenter of the massive earthquake that has killed thousands and that struck the country on Monday.

The official Xinhua News Agency said 2,000 troops were sent to work on the Zipingpu Dam, upriver from the town of Dujiangyan in the disaster area.

But late Wednesday, the government pronounced the dam safe after it was inspected by experts.

“Experts from the Ministry of Water Resources today had a complete and concrete examination on the key sections of the dam,” CCTV said, reading a statement also posted on the Sichuan government website. “After that, the expert group said the structure was stable and safe.”

The National Development Reform Commission, China’s top economic planning body, said the earthquake had damaged 391 dams. It said two of the dams were large ones, 28 were medium-sized and the rest were small ones.

In an earlier report, Xinhua quoted the Ministry of Water Resources as urging protection of the Zipingpu Reservoir between Dujiangyan and Wenchuan and said Dujiangyan would be “swamped” if major problems emerged at the dam.

Chinese rescuers taking relief supplies to the area of the epicenter, meantime, scoured flattened mountain villages for tens of thousands of missing and buried victims amid fears the death toll of nearly 15,000 would soar far higher.

As help began to arrive in some of the hardest-to-reach areas, some victims trapped for more than two days under collapsed buildings were still being pulled out alive. But the enormous scale of the devastation meant that resources were stretched thin, and makeshift aid stations and refugee centers were springing up over the disaster area the size of Belgium.

Source: USA Today.

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