Soldiers blew up wooden houses and other debris yesterday in a lake formed by China’s deadly earthquake to speed the flow of water into a diversion channel and ease the threat of flooding for more than 1 million people in the sprawling disaster zone.
The Tangjiashan “quake lake” continued to swell even as water gushed down the spillway built after two weeks of frantic work by engineers and soldiers. Authorities were still on high alert, although the draining operation was progressing smoothly, Xinhua news agency said.
“There is a lot of debris in the upper reaches, and some are quite big, like wooden houses. So now we have asked soldiers to eliminate the debris by using explosives or other means,” Chinese Minister of Water Resources Chen Lei (陳雷) told China Central Television.
Soldiers hurled explosives at pieces of splintered wood drifting in one section, while troops blasted away boulders in the diversion channel, Xinhua reported.
The Tangjiashan lake, created when a landslide dammed the Tongkou River, has become a priority for a government working to head off another catastrophe even as it cares for millions left homeless from the May 12 quake that killed nearly 70,000 people. More than 1.3 million people live downriver from Tangjiashan, and 250,000 of them have been evacuated.
Although the lake was draining, the effect was barely apparent in the riverside village of Jiuling, about 45km downstream, where the turquoise waters of the Tongkou flowed placidly.
“I wish they’d hurry, look at us here,” said rice farmer Cai Yuhua, gesturing at a cluster of mostly homemade tents built on a nearby hillside, where she and hundreds of others waited out the flooding threat.
“The last time we could go back to our homes was May 22. I want to go home and look at my things,” said Cai, who was living under a striped plastic tarp cast over bamboo poles.
Government specialists, quoted by state media, played down the threat of imminent flooding, saying Tangjiashan’s landslide-created dam should hold. But state media and officials estimated it would be a week before the evacuees could return home, even if all goes well.
The official death toll crept up Sunday to 69,136 people, with 17,686 still missing.
The Tangjiashan lake is the largest of more than 30 created by last month’s quake and draining it safely will depend on controlling the outflow of water, said David Petley, a professor of geography at Durham University in the UK.
If water flows too slowly from the lake, pressure will continue to build up behind the dam. If the flow is too fast, it could erode the 472m drainage channel constructed by the government, creating a steeper, narrower course that would pull in water more rapidly, potentially causing the dam to collapse, Petley said.
“The Chinese government have responded to this in an impressive manner,” Petley said. “I don’t believe that much more could have been done. Unfortunately, the scale of the problem means that management is very challenging.”
The government is aiming to recruit 1,096 foreign English teachers and teaching assistants this year, the Ministry of Education said yesterday. The foreign teachers would work closely with elementary and junior-high instructors to create and teach courses, ministry official Tsai Yi-ching (蔡宜靜) said. Together, they would create an immersive language environment, helping to motivate students while enhancing the skills of local teachers, she said. The ministry has since 2021 been recruiting foreign teachers through the Taiwan Foreign English Teacher Program, which offers placement, salary, housing and other benefits to eligible foreign teachers. Two centers serving northern and southern Taiwan assist in recruiting and training
WIDE NET: Health officials said they are considering all possibilities, such as bongkrekic acid, while the city mayor said they have not ruled out the possibility of a malicious act of poisoning Two people who dined at a restaurant in Taipei’s Far Eastern Department Store Xinyi A13 last week have died, while four are in intensive care, the Taipei Department of Health said yesterday. All of the outlets of Malaysian vegetarian restaurant franchise Polam Kopitiam have been ordered to close pending an investigation after 11 people became ill due to suspected food poisoning, city officials told a news conference in Taipei. The first fatality, a 39-year-old man who ate at the restaurant on Friday last week, died of kidney failure two days later at the city’s Mackay Memorial Hospital. A 66-year-old man who dined
EYE ON STRAIT: The US spending bill ‘doubles security cooperation funding for Taiwan,’ while also seeking to counter the influence of China US President Joe Biden on Saturday signed into law a US$1.2 trillion spending package that includes US$300 million in foreign military financing to Taiwan, as well as funding for Taipei-Washington cooperative projects. The US Congress early on Saturday overwhelmingly passed the Further Consolidated Appropriations Act 2024 to avoid a partial shutdown and fund the government through September for a fiscal year that began six months ago. Under the package, the Defense Appropriations Act would provide a US$27 billion increase from the previous fiscal year to fund “critical national defense efforts, including countering the PRC [People’s Republic of China],” according to a summary
‘CARRIER KILLERS’: The Tuo Chiang-class corvettes’ stealth capability means they have a radar cross-section as small as the size of a fishing boat, an analyst said President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) yesterday presided over a ceremony at Yilan County’s Suao Harbor (蘇澳港), where the navy took delivery of two indigenous Tuo Chiang-class corvettes. The corvettes, An Chiang (安江) and Wan Chiang (萬江), along with the introduction of the coast guard’s third and fourth 4,000-tonne cutters earlier this month, are a testament to Taiwan’s shipbuilding capability and signify the nation’s resolve to defend democracy and freedom, Tsai said. The vessels are also the last two of six Tuo Chiang-class corvettes ordered from Lungteh Shipbuilding Co (龍德造船) by the navy, Tsai said. The first Tuo Chiang-class vessel delivered was Ta Chiang (塔江)