A military helicopter carrying 19 people, many of them injured in China’s devastating earthquake, crashed in fog and turbulence, and authorities were searching for survivors, state media reported Sunday.
SICHUAN - The Russian-designed Mi-171 transport helicopter crashed Saturday afternoon in Wenchuan county in China’s quake-hit southwest, the official Xinhua News Agency reported. Xinhua said late Sunday that the aircraft was carrying 5 crew and14 others, including people with quake injuries.
There was no immediate word on any survivors or casualties. Xinhua said a search-and-rescue operation was under way.
Meanwhile, troops equipped with diggers and backhoes finished digging a channel to siphon off water from an earthquake-formed lake that authorities feared could burst and further devastate stricken areas.
The lake formed above Beichuan town in Sichuan province when a hillside plunged into a river valley during the May 12 quake. It is the largest of more than 30 quake-formed lakes.
More than 600 troops who had been working around the clock for six days finished digging the trench Saturday evening, Xinhua said. The channel nearly 500 yards (meters) long and up to 10 yards (meters) wide was meant to drain off some of the lake as its water level continues to rise, Xinhua said.
As a precaution, authorities were also evacuating about 200,000 people who could suffer from flooding if the lake bursts.
Downstream, people packed belongings and evacuated the villages of Jiuling and Qinglian on Sunday. Soldiers in camouflage fatigues and orange life vests patrolled the empty streets. Warnings spray-painted in red on one building in Qinglian showed how high waters might reach if the dam bursts.
The confirmed death toll from China’s worst quake in three decades stood at more than 69,000, with nearly 19,000 others still missing.
Two men who had been stranded in Sichuan’s mountains with injuries from the quake were airlifted out Sunday by a Hong Kong-provided helicopter, Xinhua said. Six soldiers who parachuted in found the men, both miners, a day earlier and treated them.
