Special report: Reconstruction After Earthquake

Engineering soldiers fire a missile to blast boulders in a man-made sluice channel in Tangjiashan, quake-hit southwest China's Sichuan Province, June 8, 2008. (Xinhua Photo) Photo Gallery>>>

    BEIJING, June 9 -- Water is now flowing at nearly ten cubic meters a second through the sluice channel at the Tangjiashan quake lake. That's five times faster than the initial two meters per second. Soldiers blasted off a boulder in the man-made sluice channel on Saturday afternoon to speed up the drainage.

    The drainage of the Tangjiashan barrier lake started early Saturday morning, as its water flowed into a man-made sluice channel.

    Experts said the lake's dam is not in danger of collapsing in the foreseeable future, and that no more spots of overflowing have emerged.

    No heavy rainfalls are expected until mid-June, which will also help the quake relief work. And the likelihood of a strong aftershock measuring 6 or above on the Richter scale is also slim.

    Soldiers are still still widening and deepening the sluice channel to speed up the drainage, with the help of 30 bulldozers and excavators. They also also digging a second sluice channel.

    The overflow had been expected to occur on Friday night when the water level reached the lowest point of the blockage.

    But it was delayed by a 0.6-meter-high temporary dam erected on Friday afternoon to protect workers dredging the spillway.

    The swollen lake was formed by a massive landslide following last month's earthquake.

    It held over 220 million cubic meters of water and posed a threat to about 1.3 million people downstream.

    Hundreds of armed police and soldiers worked for six days and nights to dig a channel to divert water from the lake.

    More than 250,000 people in low-lying areas in Mianyang were relocated under a plan based on the assumption that a third of the lake's volume would breach its banks.

    (Source: cctv.com)