China braces for possible lake bursts

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Forty-six seriously injured people needed to be evacuated immediately in Beichuan, also at the epicentre of Monday's 7.9 magnitude quake, where the water level of a lake was rising rapidly and may burst, Xinhua news agency said.

It did not give details but Hong Kong cable television said some 1.2 million people were being evacuated in Qingchuan, about 90 km (55 miles) northeast of Beichuan, as rising waters threatened to burst a lake's banks there.

Anger has been mounting at the large number of schools which collapsed and there is growing concern about the safety of dams and reservoirs which have been weakened in the mountainous province of Sichuan, an area about the size of Spain.

Survivors were found on Saturday, five days after the disaster, including a German tourist who was pulled from rubble in Wenchuan after being buried for 114 hours, Xinhua said.

China has put the known death toll at over 22,000 but has said it expects it to exceed 50,000. About 4.8 million people have lost their homes and the days are numbered in which survivors can be found.

"Although the time for the best chance of rescue, the first 72 hours after an earthquake, has passed, saving lives remains the top priority of our work," Hu told distraught survivors just over a week after a jubilant China celebrated the Olympic torch reaching the summit of Mount Everest.

In earthquakes elsewhere in the world, survivors have been found a week or more after the disaster. In Baguio in the Philippines in 1990, a cook was found alive in the rubble of a shattered hotel after two weeks.

He had drunk his own urine and drops of rainwater to stay alive. A man and a woman trapped for 11 days in an elevator shaft in the hotel were also rescued.

Among other survivors on Saturday, Xinhua said 33 people were dug out of the rubble in Beichuan, one of the worst hit areas. One young man was rescued after being buried for 104 hours and troops evacuated 18 scientists trapped in a forest in Mianzhu.

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