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After residents, relief workers leave

— PHOTO: Xinhua

Reassuring: China’s President Hu Jintao talks to a quake survivor in Guangping Town, Ningqiang County. At right, a major project of building a sluice from the Tangjiashan Lake was completed on Saturday. The lake was formed after the quake struck Sichuan.

MIANYANG (SICHUAN): The first group of relief workers handling the Tangjiashan quake-formed lake in Sichuan Province were evacuated from the dam site on Saturday.

The evacuees are mainly members of the water and electricity section of the People’s Armed Police Force. A total of 350 relief workers were expected to leave the swelling quake-induced Tangjiashan Lake on Saturday. Others were required to leave by Sunday noon.

More than 600 armed police were working at the site in the past few days. “We prefer the airlift if weather permits.

If the weather turns bad, we will walk out tomorrow morning.” said Yue Xi, deputy chief of the water and electricity section. Currently, two Army Air Force brigades and two Mig-26 were airlifting relief workers and equipment, including drilling machines and oil tanks, he said. All the oil will be taken away to avoid environmental pollution, he added. A total of 197,477 people were evacuated to safe ground in line with an emergency plan, said an official with the quake relief headquarters.

Tan Li, Communist Party chief of Mianyang and head of Mianyang City Quake Control and Relief Headquarters, on Friday renewed an order that 1.3 million people living downstream from Tangjiashan must be evacuated to higher grounds demarcated by the government.

The evacuation would be completed by Sunday. Two other plans require the relocation of 1.2 million people if the half of the lake volume was released, or 1.3 million if the barrier of the quake lake fully opened. The major project of a sluice — an irregular cube designed to discharge flooded water — from the Tangjiashan Lake has been completed. It is expected to discharge flood water between June 1 and June 3. — Xinhua

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