(Xinhua)
Updated: 2008-06-08 15:35

MIANYANG, Sichuan Province  -- Drainage of the dangerous Tangjiashan "quake lake" in Sichuan Province has gone smoothly since Saturday. However, local government is still on high alert.

Engineering soldiers have fired missiles to blast boulders in a man-made sluice channel to accelerate water drainage.

Xinhua reporters saw at the site the water flow running through the sluice channel has widened from previously less than five meters to about eight meters.

"Generally speaking, construction of the lake's drainage projects goes on well, but the lake remains dangerous for hundreds of thousands of people downstream," said General Ge Zhenfeng, Deputy Chief of the General Staff of the People's Liberation Army (PLA), who is supervising the relief work at the site.

"It will take us a few days to eliminate the potential danger of the lake," said the general.

Some 600 armed police and soldiers worked for six days and nights to dig a 475-meter channel to divert water from the lake.

Xinhua reporters saw that soldiers were still widening and deepening the sluice channel with the help of some 30 bulldozers and excavators. They were also digging a second sluice channel on another side of the lake barrier.

The soldiers have finished building one third of the new channel, which needs to remove about 60,000 cubic meters of earth and stone, said Liu Yongjian, a PLA officer in charge of the channel projects.

"We have also prepared for underwater explosion to deepen the channels for accelerated drainage," said Liu.

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