Aftershock in China kills at least 2

MIANYANG, China – A powerful aftershock hit Sichuan province today, killing at least two people and heightening fears of landslides and flooding, even as more survivors of the May 12 earthquake sought to trek back to their mountain villages.

The aftershock, at 4:21 p.m. local time, was one of the strongest of thousands since the initial magnitude 7.9 temblor and damaged about 270,000 houses, the official New China News Agency said. The U.S. Geological Survey measured the aftershock at 6. It was centered in Qingchuan county, about 95 miles northeast of the initial quake’s epicenter in Wenchuan, but it was felt across the region and even 800 miles away in Beijing, where people said office buildings swayed.

In Sichuan province, one person was confirmed dead and dozen of others were seriously injured, New China News Agency said, citing a disaster relief official in Qingchuan county. One person died in neighboring Gansu province.

Earlier in the day, China’s central government raised the death toll from the earthquake, the nation’s worst disaster in 30 years, to 62,664 with another 23,775 people missing.

Chinese television reported today that an 80-year-old man in Mianzhu had been pulled alive from the rubble Friday. Xiao Zhihu had been trapped under a collapsed pillar of his house and survived after being fed by his wife, the television report said.

In Mianyang, south of Qingchuan, today’s aftershock caused panic in the streets, where many people, as in other places throughout this area, have been sleeping in tents since May 12.

“Everyone was running out of buildings,” said Zhang Linlei, 25, who was a few steps from the door of his apartment when the four-story complex shook and the windows above him rattled. “It’s quite scary. I will never go back to that place again,” he said of his home.

Chinese geologists have been concerned that aftershocks or heavy rains could cause a bursting of dams or overflow of so-called barrier lakes formed by the quake, which could then inundate villages.

About 90 minutes following the aftershock, scores of Chinese soldiers were mobilized at a highway toll plaza just outside Beichuan town, one of the hardest hit areas by the May 12 quake and under threat by a blocked river. The soldiers unloaded boxes of explosives.

The military leader interviewed at the scene would say only that the materials were for “important engineering purposes.”

Chinese media at the site said officials had hoped to airlift equipment to get to the lake but that bad weather could force them to blast through the debris to stop potential floods.

There was drizzling this morning in the Beichuan area, and China’s weather bureau forecast heavy rains in parts of Sichuan province.

Concerns about the weather and more aftershocks are likely to keep people at government-run camps and slow their move back home to rebuild. In recent days, officials have exhorted people who can to move on, as the government continues to shift its focus from rescue to resettlement and recovery.

The government wants to relieve some of the overcrowding at camps where many of the estimated 5 million people made homeless by the quake have taken shelter. Many survivors desperately want to go back to their communities, eager to start rebuilding homes, planting and harvesting fields, and seeing loved ones.

 don.lee@latimes.com