China warns of battle ahead to rebuild
China struggled to keep roads open to provide a lifeline for quake survivors today while the government warned that rebuilding after the disaster would be “arduous”.
“We are racing against time to repair damaged infrastructure,” said Mu Hong, of the country’s top economic planning body, adding that some roads were only reopened on a temporary basis.
“The high risk of mudslides and landslides makes our efforts more difficult,” he said.
Rebuilding infrastructure is just a part of the recovery effort that government officials said earlier would take three years in hard-hit Sichuan province.
“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,” it said in a statement.
In the disaster zone, 158,000 people have been evacuated and dozens of villages emptied in case the newly formed Tangjiashan lake bursts before soldiers and engineers can drain it.
Troops used explosives to clear debris and helicopters to airlift heavy moving equipment to dig drainage channels from the lake, two miles above the devastated town of Beichuan.
Forty machines, including excavators, were at the site, which was unreachable by road, and hundreds of troops are working around the clock to dig the channel, the official Xinhua News Agency reported.
Yang Hailiang, the official heading the operation, said the teams were making good progress thanks to clear weather, and that they were one-third of the way through the job.
At the riverside Tongkou village downstream from the lake, residents have been moved to a camp up the hill but were returning each day to tend to their fields.
“If the water comes down from the burst dam, somebody will launch a fireworks signal to give us warning so everybody can run uphill,” said villager Wang Hongyun. “Without seeing the warning, we will keep on gathering our crops.”
Premier Wen Jiabao told a meeting of the State Council, China’s Cabinet, that handling the danger from the swelling lakes was the “most pressing task” in the disaster recovery effort.
Of 34 lakes created by the earthquake in the mountainous province, 28 were at risk of bursting, according to the agency.
Meanwhile, the number of confirmed deaths from the quake climbed toward an expected toll of more than 80,000. China’s Cabinet said that 68,109 people were killed, with 19,851 still missing.
In Japan, officials said China had asked Japanese soldiers to deliver earthquake relief aid in what would be the first significant military dispatch between the two countries since the Second World War.
Beijing has allowed foreign rescue and medical experts from several countries to help in the relief operation – a switch from China’s usual approach of preferring to handle internal matters on its own.
