The water level in Tangjiashan quake-formed lake in the southwest China's Sichuan Province is expected to fall on Tuesday, as outflow outpaces influx three days after drainage efforts began.
Drainage of the quake lake through a manmade spillway speeded up to 1,760 cubic meters per second at 9:30 am on Tuesday, far faster than the estimated influx of 110 cubic meters per second, the Tangjiashan lake emergency headquarters said.
Water flow in the lower reaches of the lake, in Beichuan County, reached 2,240 cubic meters per second.
As of 9 am, the lake's water level stood at 742.18 meters, compared with the 742.96 meters reported at 8 pm on Monday.
Faster drainage of the lake has eased the peril on the lower reaches, but the emergency headquarters is still on alert of further landslides and has in the meantime begun to evacuate some of the emergency workers, mostly soldiers with the People's Liberation Army and the armed police.
More than 200 armed police officers have been working around the clock for four days to drain the lake, which threatens some 1 million residents living in the lower reaches of the river if it overflows.
A manmade spillway started to drain the lake on Saturday morning and military engineers have fired short-range missiles several times on Sunday and Monday to blast boulders in the channel and speed up the outflow.
Thanks to two massive blasts on Monday evening which broke through the "bottleneck" in the spillway, the water outflow speeded up to 500 cubic meters per second early on Tuesday, compared with 80 cubic meters on Monday night.
More than 250,000 people in low-lying areas in Mianyang City were relocated under a plan based on the assumption that one-third of the lake volume breached the dam.
The Tangjiashan quake lake, formed after quake-triggered landslides from Tangjiashan Mountain, blocked the Tongkou River running through Beichuan County, one of the worst-hit areas in the May 12 quake.
Source: Xinhua
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