When the quake hit: new footage

The Chinese Government rushed 2,000 troops to a dam above the devastated town of Dujiangyan, in Sichuan province, today in an emergency attempt to plug cracks caused by the earthquake.

If the Zipingpu Dam were to collapse, torrents of water would surge downriver into some of the areas where more than 42,000 people are reported dead or missing.

Rescuers finally reached some the worst hit of those areas in the Sichuan province today. The official death toll now stands at 14,866, but while the army and emergency workers battle to reach isolated areas and scour mile after mile of rubble, the scale of the disaster continues to rise.

Li Chengyun, the vice governor of Sichuan, told the official Xinhua news agency that almost 26,000 people were buried in collapsed buildings and a further 1,451 were missing in his province alone.

Damage done to roads and communication lines meant that soldiers arrived in Wenchuan county, the epicentre of the quake, for the first time today after a two-day hike through the ravaged region.

When they reached the city of Yingxiu, rescuers found it "much worse than expected". Of the town’s population of about 10,000, it is thought that only 2,300 survived and 1,000 of those were badly hurt.

Troops have been sent to the Zipingpu Dam to ensure that further infrastructure collapse does not leave the region engulfed in water just as officials had begun to re-open some of transport routes.

He Biao, the director of the Aba Disaster Relief headquarters, said: "Currently, the most dangerous problems are several reservoirs near Wenchuan."

"There are already serious problems with the Tulong Reservoir on the Min River. It may collapse. If that happens, it would affect several power plants below and be extremely dangerous," he said, according to transcripts released on the CCTV website.

A senior engineer, however, told Times Online that the Zipingpu Dam had suffered surface cracks but was not in immediate danger of collapse.

The National Development Reform Commission, China’s top economic planning body, announced that the earthquake had damaged 391 dams overall, but most of those were small.

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