CHENGDU: Rain grounded helicopters and hampered attempts Thursday to drain a quake lake threatening to burst its banks and cause floods.

    Tangjiashan lake near Beichuan was formed when a landslide triggered by the magnitude 8.0 quake on May 12 blocked Jianjiang River. The lake has been rising by up to 2 m a day.

    In the past three days of round-the-clock work, troops have dug a 50-m-wide channel running 300 m long, CCTV said. The sluice was expected to be ready on June 5, experts have said.

    Of the 34 lakes created by the earthquake, 28 are at risk of bursting, according to Xinhua News Agency.

    The Ministry of Finance said Thursday it had earmarked another 1 billion yuan ($144 million) to finance the handling of the swelling quake lakes.

    Earlier, the ministry had allotted 4 million yuan ($576,000) to assist local authorities to minimize the threats.

    The death toll from the quake reached 68,516 by noon Thursday, with 365,399 injured and 19,350 missing, the State Council Information Office said.

    About 15.15 million affected people in the quake zones have been relocated, according to the office.

    Hospitals have treated 87,391 people, of whom 56,580 were discharged.

    Meanwhile, about 619,400 tents had been sent to the quake-affected areas by mid-day Thursday.

    By Thursday morning, 98.2 percent of banks in the quake-hit areas resumed services, with 238 branches still shut.

    During the 24 hours till noon Thursday, 219 aftershocks were recorded in Sichuan but none was above magnitude 4, the provincial seismological bureau said.

    Donations from home and abroad reached 37.3 billion yuan ($5.33 billion). So far, 10.4 billion yuan ($1.5 billion), in cash and relief materials, has been forwarded to quake-affected areas, the information office said.

    The military released some details of the massive recovery effort. Lu Dengming, commander for the area around the provincial capital of Chengdu, said that by Wednesday, 133,000 troops and armed police had been sent into quake-hit areas for relief work.

    The army has mobilized another 45,000 reservists to help with the rescue work, he said Thursday.

    Panda reserve

    The world-famous panda reserve in Wolong, badly damaged by the earthquake, is looking for a new home, Xinhua reported.

    "It's better to move, I think," Zhang Hemin, the chief of the Wolong Giant Panda Reserve, said Thursday.

    The reserve is only 32 km from the epicenter of the quake, in which five staff members died. One panda is missing and many panda enclosures were heavily damaged.

    Conditions are so dire that the government last week arranged an emergency food shipment of about 5 tons of bamboo for the 47 pandas still at the reserve..

    "What I worry about are secondary disasters, such as severe aftershocks," Zhang said. "The road is easily blocked by rocks falling from the mountain. There would be no way to get the food in."

    Some pandas have been moved to another breeding center in Chengdu, and eight were flown to Beijing last weekend.

    From ChinaDaily.com.cn