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Officials Scramble To Stem A New Wave Of Disaster

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The Associated Press

Published: May 28, 2008

MIANYANG, China - About 80,000 people were evacuated Tuesday from downstream of an unstable earthquake-created dam that is threatening to collapse, and troops rushed to carve a trench to drain the water before it floods the valley.

The threat of flooding comes even as quake aftershocks continue to hit the region. Two temblors on Tuesday collapsed hundreds of thousands of homes, the official state news agency said.

Dozens of lakes have been swelling behind walls of mud and rubble that have plugged narrow valleys in parts of the disaster zone, adding a new worry for millions of survivors.

More than 30 villages were emptied, and the people were being sent to camps like the one outside Jiangyou.

The Tangjiashan lake in northern Sichuan province, formed when a massive landslide blocked a river, is one of dozens of fragile dams created during the earthquake that pose a new destructive threat in the disaster zone.

Soldiers hauled explosives through the mountains to reach the area, and the official Chinese Daily said Tuesday that they were "preparing to dynamite the barrier."

The lake is swelling behind a landslide near Beichuan, one of the towns hit hardest by the May 12 tremor.

The number of deaths from the quake has climbed toward an expected toll of 80,000 or more. And aftershocks continued, including two that razed more than 420,000 houses.

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