China says families mostly reunited

CHENGDU, China -- Most of the 8,000 children found alone after China's devastating earthquake have been reunited with their parents, Chinese officials said Friday.

In the chaos after the 7.9-magnitude earthquake, which made 5 million homeless, many survivors were separated from their families.

Social workers have helped bring together more than 7,000 children and their families since the earthquake struck Sichuan province May 12, said Ye Lu, director of social welfare at the Sichuan provincial Civil Affairs Department.

"A little more than 1,000 children remain unclaimed or orphaned," Ye said.

Officials have been deluged by offers from within China and overseas to adopt orphans from the quake, but the need was now far less than was earlier thought, Ye said.

"We are still getting thousands of calls per week asking about how to adopt, but we are still hoping to find the parents of these 1,000 kids," Ye said.

More than 18,000 people still are listed as missing more than two weeks after the quake, which crumbled scores of towns across hardest-hit Sichuan province.

The government on Friday increased the confirmed death toll to 68,858. Officials expect the final tally to top 80,000.

Separately, officials upgraded the threat posed by waters rising quickly behind a mass of rocks and earth that tumbled from a mountainside when the temblor struck and blocked a river running through a valley dotted by dozens of villages.

By early today, authorities had evacuated nearly 200,000 people in the direct path of the potential flood to higher ground. Many already were living in tents or other temporary shelters after their homes were destroyed.

Officials also said they had a plan to evacuate 1.3 million people in and around Mianyang, a city that could face flooding, within five hours if the dam wall breaks.

Hundreds of troops using 40 bulldozers and heavy excavating machines are working around the clock at the lake, named Tangjiashan, to dig channels that will drain the lake safely. There was no sign Friday that the dam was close to bursting.

Tangjiashan is the largest of more than 30 lakes that have formed behind landslides caused by the quake, which also weakened man-made dams in the mountainous parts of the disaster zone.

Many of the 5 million left homeless are living in tent camps or prefabricated housing being erected by troops, settlements that are taking on the tone of new villages. In one camp at Mianzhu, hospitals, schools and even a makeshift shopping mall had emerged, along with stores selling shampoo, shoes, beer and clothes.

A mobile medical center on the back of a tractor-trailer rig offered free eye exams. But some residents were longing for the comforts of home.

"Life is really good here, but we don't have a TV. The things I miss most, though, are my stuffed animals. I lost them when our home collapsed," said Fang Ming, a 10-year-old girl standing outside her tent peeling an orange with the sharp edge of a chopstick.