China begins to drain quake lake

Taohua Mountain: Water began draining from an earthquake-formed lake in China's disaster zone on Saturday in a controlled diversion that lessened the threat of flooding.

Worries about Tangjiashan lake bursting have driven authorities to evacuate more than 250,000 people and mount a hurried effort to build a diversion channel for the water to flow through the landslide that blocked the Tongkou River. Workers deepened the channel on Friday, and after steady rains, water flowed into the spillway on Saturday morning, state media reported.

By 8am, waters that had been building behind the landslide for nearly four weeks appeared to stabilise, the State Council, China's Cabinet, said in a report posted on its website.

"Emergency work is still proceeding urgently, but in the foreseeable future there's no risk of the dam collapsing," the Xinhua News Agency quoted Chengdu Military Region Deputy Commander Fan Xiaoguang as saying.

But engineers were monitoring bridges and river banks downstream to see if they would hold under the rush of water. Work crews were trying to dig a secondary channel to improve the flow, China Central Television and Xinhua reported.

The potential collapse of the lake threatened to flood an area that is home to more than 1 million and compound the misery in a disaster zone still reeling from the May 12 magnitude-7.9 quake that has killed nearly 70,000 people.