MIANYANG (China): China’s struggle to overcome earthquake devastation was compounded by confusion after an official denied a report that 1.3 million people would evacuate from a city threatened by a swelling “quake lake”.

The landslide-blocked river at Tangjiashan in southwest China’s Sichuan province is the most pressing danger after an earthquake devastated the region on May 12.

The official death toll from the quake is 68,858 and is sure to rise with 18,618 missing, and there is widespread worry that over 30 landslide-blocked rivers could burst through and bring more havoc by flooding downstream towns and reservoirs.

The official Xinhua news agency said Tan Li, Communist Party Secretary of Mianyang in the quake zone, ordered 1.3 million people living downstream from Tangjiashan to “evacuate to higher ground”.

But Zhou Hua, a Mianyang city official who is a spokesman for the lake relief effort, said the report was inaccurate.

“There is a virtual training exercise scheduled for tomorrow to test our contingency plan to move that many people,” he said. “But there is no public participation, and we see no reason at all to actually implement the plan at this stage.”

In villages outside Mianyang city there were no immediate signs of either mass panic or exodus.

“The government and the army are working on it and won’t let it burst,” said Jin Dongsheng, a farmer in Qingyi town near the city. He and about 3,000 town residents had been moved about half an hour’s walk uphill from homes close the river bank.

Xinhua’s Chinese-language service later also said there was merely a training exercise planned in Mianyang, a city of 5.3 million people including many in rural areas.

At the unstable Tangjiashan lake, hundreds of troops have removed more than a third of the earth for a channel intended to ease pressure from the rising waters, Zhou said.

Up to 190,000 residents downstream had moved to higher ground, usually hillsides close to where they were living before, to avoid a surge if the blockage suddenly gave way, he said.

Xinhua said the water level was nearly 23 metres below the lowest point of the barrier, which experts have said could give way quickly once breached. Troops have also built escape paths in the event that happens.

A Chinese meteorological authority official, Zhai Panmao, said the authority did not expect heavy rain in the area in the next 10 days.

“We’ve adopted extremely important measures and are opening up a breach and so on,” he said of the Tangjiashan build-up.

“We have full confidence in solving this problem.”

Post-quake reconstruction work has only begun, with many displaced people facing a cramped, sweltering summer in tents.

The government has received $5.09 billion in donations of cash and relief goods from home and abroad to date, officials said.

But some aid pledged has yet to be received, and a deputy head of the Ministry of Civil Affairs disaster relief office, Pang Chenmin, warned tardy donors they could be publicly shamed.

“The aid ought to be given to the recipient as promised and in a timely manner. If it needs to be delayed for a day or two, they can coordinate with the relevant department,” Pang told a news conference in Beijing.

“But if it is not given, the recipient has the right to go after payment, and inform the public in an appropriate way,” Pang said, without elaborating.

Japan had shelved plans for its military to fly tents and blankets to China, a Japanese government official said on Friday, after messages on Chinese Internet sites recalled Tokyo’s World War Two atrocities in the country.

Meanwhile, an official investigator pinpointed the poor design and construction of at least one of the many schools that collapsed during the earthquake, killing thousands of children.

—Reuters