Water buildup in Tangjiashan Lake threatens to spill over landslide block.
Soldiers and police scrambled to open a spillway for a lake forming behind debris dumped into a river valley by China's May 12 earthquake while huge aftershocks—serious earthquakes in themselves—continued to rock Sichuan Province. Tens of thousands of survivors evacuated threatened downstream areas and demolition crews began pulling down and blasting damaged buildings to prepare for reconstruction.
The Chinese government is involving geologists in a big way in planning for the reconstruction of the infrastructure and buildings destroyed by the earthquake in Sichuan and neighboring provinces where more than 80,000 people are believed to have perished.
Fresh construction on some of the major projects destroyed by the quake will have to wait until a committee of specialists is able to identify the notorious seismic belt that must be avoided in all future works, the government has ordered. Beijing is keen to involve international specialists in the geological studies, informed sources say.
Landslides into riverbeds have created 34 new lakes in Sichuan province. These lakes pose serious danger to people downstream. On May 27, government engineers were creating a channel to drain out some of the waters of Tangjiashan Lake, one of the dangerous water bodies, after evacuating over 80,000 people living around the lake.
Retrieval of nuclear material in a province that has several nuclear installations presents another challenge. Wu Xiaoqing, vice-environment minister, recently said that investigators have found 50 "hazardous sources of radiation" in the quake-hit areas. Most have been recovered, but "three are buried in rubble and another 12 are in dangerous buildings, which staff cannot go into," he said in Beijing. "There has yet to be an accidental release of radiation," he added.
China's chief nuclear weapons research lab is in Mianyang. The province is also believed to house several secret atomic sites, but no nuclear power stations.
The scale of damage reads like the list of total infrastructure in a small nation. The quake damaged 4,657 small and medium sized bridges, 84 tunnels, government sources said. A 40-car freight train derailed, caught fire, and was trapped in a tunnel on the Baoji-Chengdu rail line paralyzing this crucial rail link for over ten days after the quake.
Until May 19, rescue workers had not been able to reach many of the affected villages, with the government complaining that road blockages are the biggest challenge in its efforts to save lives.
The State Electricity Regulatory Commission has said that eight of the 31 large power plants damaged in the earthquake have been restored. A total of 286 small power plants had been affected. Of them, 97 small plants with a total capacity of 758 MW have been restored. In all, 47% of the total power production of nearly 10,000 MW in Sichuan's plants is back in order.
• December 28 Issue
• December 7 Ad Close
Stay top of mind in print and online to the owners, engineers and contractors you need to reach.
Get connected today by contacting your account manager, call: 800-458-3842 or
print this article
e-mail this article
del.icio.us
