China town flooded as quake lake drains
Muddy lake water from a dangerously unstable "quake lake" rushed into the devastated Chinese town of Beichuan on Tuesday, covering about a third of the ruins, after soldiers used explosives to widen a sluice.
China says defence budget to riseBrown water, clumps of trees and occasional vehicles were moving quickly into low-lying areas of the town, washing away remains of corpses, family mementoes and valuables left under the rubble.
Wang Guiru, 43, whose wife died in the quake alongside his father and mother-in-law, said he had hoped eventually to look for their remains.
"Now I guess we can never go back," he said stoically. "This is fate. We have to learn to face up to realities."
The water level at the Tangjiashan quake lake, formed by China's most devastating earthquake in decades, dropped by nearly eight metres (26 ft) in three hours on Tuesday, Xinhua news agency said.
The Tangjiashan lake, the largest of the more than 30 created when landslides triggered by the quake blocked the flow of rivers, has so far prompted the evacuation of more than 250,000 residents downstream in case the mud-and-rock dam bursts.
SOLDIERS EVACUATED
Helicopters were evacuating remaining soldiers and experts from the top of the dam, which was no longer safe with cracks appearing as the flow of water accelerated by more than tenfold, Xinhua said, adding some mountains near the lake had started crumbling.
It attributed the abrupt increase in water discharged from the lake to "two massive blasts on Monday evening which broke through the bottleneck" in a sluice opened by soldiers.
The torrents had further widened and lowered the sluice, Xinhua said.
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