Thousands flee as water levels rise in China

Thousands of Chinese earthquake victims fled areas near the epicentre today, fearful of potential flooding from a lake where water levels were reported to be rising dangerously.

The lake in Beichuan county "may burst its bank at any time", the official Xinhua News Agency reported, without giving details as to what was causing the rise in water level, with no recent rain in the disaster area.

Residents left their homes for higher ground, but 46 seriously injured were still at risk, the agency said.

Thousands of people were seen fleeing the area, near the epicentre of Monday's magnitude 7.9 earthquake. Witnesses said there were conflicting reports on whether a dam had burst near Beichuan in the north of Sichuan province or whether a lake had overflowed.

A local disaster relief official said the water in Haizi lake, nestled between two mountains, was not rising very quickly. Experts were studying how to release the excess from the lake, said the relief official in Mianyang.

Survivors were still being found under destroyed buildings five days after the quake, which the government said killed at least 50,000 people.

A 52-year-old man buried in the ruins for 117 hours was pulled to safety in Beichuan, just after a German tourist was found in Wenchuan county, Xinhua reported.

The vast majority of survivors are rescued in the first 24 hours after a disaster, with the chances of survival dropping each day, said Dr Irving Jacoby of the University of California, San Diego, who heads a medical assistance team that responded to a 1989 earthquake in California, Hurricane Katrina in 2005 and other disasters.

A person trapped but uninjured could survive a week or even 10 days, and in extreme circumstances two weeks or more, he said.

The confirmed death toll stood at 22,069, but another 14,000 were said to be buried in Sichuan.

Continuing aftershocks made digging through unstable buildings dangerous. On Friday afternoon, an aftershock rattled parts of Sichuan, burying vehicles on a road leading to the epicentre, Xinhua said.

Rescue teams from South Korea, Singapore and Russia began work today, joining Japanese specialists.

The United Nations announced a grant of up to €4.4m from its Central Emergency Response Fund, to be used by UN agencies and programs.

The government has not given a figure for the number of people left homeless, but Housing Minister Jiang Weixin said more than four million apartments and homes had been damaged or destroyed in Sichuan province. He said the water supply situation was "extremely serious" in Sichuan, and not flowing at all in 20 cities and counties.

Caring for the untold tens of thousands or more survivors across the earthquake zone was stretching government resources.

Just north of the provincial capital of Chengdu, the town square in Shifang had become a tent camp for 2,000 people, and co-ordinator Li Yuanshao reported a lack of tents. Many people walked in from surrounding towns with few belongings.

The Ministry of Health said there had been no major outbreaks of epidemics or other public health hazards in the earthquake area, according to Xinhua. By late Friday, hospitals in Sichuan had received 116,460 patients, including nearly 16,000 severely injured.