Fear of floods grips China earthquake area

The orange-suited emergency workers had just pulled someone out of the rubble alive today when a chilling cry reverberated between the tilting high-rises, the toppled construction cranes and the market littered with bodies: The valley was about to flood.

In a panic, thousands of soldiers, earthquake survivors and aid workers raced headlong for the hills, some helping babies and old people negotiate a mountain of jagged debris. “Move it!” yelled one commander. “Don’t worry about your equipment – just get to higher ground,” barked another.

Authorities issued the warning to evacuate Beichuan, fearing that water from a choked river might overrun this obliterated town near the epicenter of Monday’s magnitude 7.9 quake. The official New China News Agency reported that a lake created by earthquake landslides “may burst its banks at any time.”

“I don’t want to die,” one survivor cried out, kneeling in terror on a rubble pile, his head repeatedly touching the ground in prayer.

The government in Beijing has been playing down the threat of another disaster as it works overtime to reassure the public. But the warning today underscored how jittery people’s nerves still were, given the threat of aftershocks and the risk that flooding in this mountainous area could claim more lives.

The confirmed death toll today rose to 28,881, Cabinet spokesman Guo Weimin said, with 10,600 still buried in Sichuan province. In other developments, two U.S. Air Force cargo planes were expected to arrive Sunday in Sichuan from Hawaii and Alaska loaded with tents, blankets, food and generators, the first aid flight from the United States.

Hardly a single building has been left untouched in Beichuan, located in a valley with steep mountains on both sides. All the police stations and prisons were destroyed; all six of the city’s deputy mayors are missing or dead; and most of its 30,000 residents appear to have been buried or fled.

Ten-story buildings teeter at odd angles, some supported by the debris from buildings that collapsed beside them, while a five-square-block area in the center of town is a massive rubble field that has buried streets and other landmarks.

“I can’t recognize any street,” said Ma Zizhang, 60, looking for his missing younger brother Ma Ziyuan. “I was born here and have lived here for decades, but none of this makes sense. What’s happened is madness.”

A team of 15 emergency workers, part of a bigger group that flew in from eastern Jiangxi province, had spent the last two days fanned out on the debris fields looking for survivors. Most carried ropes, shovels and picks, with one member wielding a life-detection device, essentially a 5-foot pole with a cable equipped with a microphone and video camera.

The team moved along, with members banging on debris with hammers or shovels and yelling, “Anyone in there?” “Can you hear me?” before listening for a response. On two occasions this afternoon, the rescuers got excited when they heard cellphones ring from inside the rubble, only to conclude that its owner must be dead.

The crew had a victory shortly after noon when a relative gave them the approximate location of where they thought their loved one might be. They located the building and lowered the cable into a crevice. Emergency worker Ye Bin, who was on the device when the man was found, said he heard a faint voice in response to their calls. For the next 2 1/2 hours, the crew worked by hand to clear the rubble from around the man, eventually freeing him.

The victim, underground for nearly five days, had been on the second floor of a six-story building when the quake struck. Somehow he managed to land face down in an 18-inch space between collapsed floors. When the rescuers finally freed him, they whisked him to an ambulance and on to a hospital before heading out for more searching.

“He came out very strong, immediately asked about his family and had us call their cellphone,” said Pan Yonghong, commander of the disaster relief team. “As every day passes, the chances of finding survivors are reduced. But if there’s a 1% chance, we’ll continue to exert 100% effort.”

As the afternoon wore on, the crew hoped for a second miracle, passing through a badly wrecked shopping area, shooing a flock of chickens that was scrounging around five bloated bodies on the street, before starting their climb onto the debris field.

After several arduous minutes navigating an obstacle course of spiky timbers, near-vertical slabs of concrete and steel rods, the group found a promising spot on a foothill of rubble about 60 feet above what would have been street level, if a street had been visible, and resumed their calls of “Anyone there?”

Then, about 3 o’clock, the commander got a phone call about the flood warning. The group led by Pan scrambled at full speed about 150 feet up to the top of the debris, wary of the danger that a large chunk could collapse and bury them at any time.

A giant downed construction crane and hundreds of concrete forms suggested that the summit was the top floor of a pancaked skyscraper that had been under construction when the quake hit.

The top of the heap afforded a panoramic view of the damage that nature could bestow on human civilization in a few short minutes. As confusion and panic spread, two military helicopters headed up the valley in the direction of the blocked water.

There was some confusion today over the exact source of the scare amid reports in recent days that the earthquake might have weakened dams in the area. But authorities indicated today that the problem was a so-called barrier lake, created when an earthquake or avalanche dams a river.

“This earthquake struck places where there is quite a lot of water conservancy and reservoirs,” Chinese Agriculture Vice Minister Wei Chaoan told reporters. “Some reservoirs and water-control projects have had some damage.”

Dai Ping, a Chinese environmental activist, said the government had underplayed the risk of flooding.

“A lot of this is top-secret. They don’t want to talk about it,” Dai said. “After earthquakes, new lakes are formed and they are very dangerous because they are unstable.”

 mark.magnier@latimes.com

Times staff writer Barbara Demick in Beijing and Gao Wenhuan in Beichuan contributed to this report.