China's Wen flies over "critical" quake lake

CHENGDU, China-Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao made his third trip to the earthquake zone on Thursday to inspect a swelling "quake lake" as China looked to the future, planning reconstruction of schools, homes and hospitals reduced to rubble.Troops have been trying to defuse threats from dozens of unstable lakes in the mountainous southwestern province of Sichuan formed by landslides triggered by the May 12 quake, choking rivers and endangering hundreds of thousands of people downstream.Historically, more than 90 percent of lakes formed by earthquakes burst when floods hit, Xinhua quoted Liu Ning, a leading engineer, as saying.Water levels on the largest, Tangjiashan, had risen to 738.71 meters (2,440 feet) above sea level and the chance of the natural dam made of mud and rock bursting was increasing, Xinhua said."Now it's a critical moment for the Tangjiashan quake lake, and the most important thing is to ensure there are no casualties," Wen was quoted by Xinhua as saying.More than 250,000 people have been evacuated in Beichuan county and Mianyang city in line with a contingency plan.In Jiangyou, troops checked evacuated towns door to door to make sure no villagers returned, Xinhua said.An aftershock measuring 5.0 on the Richter scale hit Qingchuan county to the northeast on Thursday, it said. About 6,000 county residents were urgently evacuated to avoid the threat of landslides with heavy rain forecast.

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As in the days of Noah....