China grappled with backed-up rivers and reservoirs in danger of collapse, along with looming storms that threatened Monday to compound damage from the country's worst earthquake in three decades.Two weeks after the magnitude 7.9 earthquake centered in Sichuan province, the confirmed death toll rose to 65,080 with 23,150 people still missing, the Cabinet said. The government has said the final number of dead is expected to exceed 80,000.

Many of the disaster victims were children, prompting officials to clarify the country's strict one-child policy guidelines.The Chengdu Population and Family Planning Committee in the capital of Sichuan province said Monday that families whose children was killed, severely injured or disabled in the quake can get a certificate to have another child.Chen Xueyun's 8-year-old son, Weixi, was killed when the family's apartment in Qingchuan collapsed. Chen said he searched three days before finding the boy's body. He wears his son's blue plastic watch as a reminder.Monday's announcement could offer some parents some hope, Chen said, after their grief subsides."If they are still sad and depressed, it's impossible to talk about another baby," he said. "But in the future, it could be quite helpful for them."On Monday, 1,800 soldiers arrived on foot at the new Tangjiashan lake in Beichuan county to fight the flood risk, each carrying 22 pounds of explosives to blast through the debris, the official Xinhua News Agency said.The lake is 2 miles upstream from the center of Beichuan county. Thousands of people who remained there after the initial earthquake have been evacuated in recent days as a precaution.With weather clearing that had prevented helicopter flights, heavy equipment was also lifted in the area to help remove debris, state media reported.But thunderstorms were forecast for parts of Sichuan later Monday and Tuesday, the China Meteorological Administration said, adding they "could increase the risks posed by river blockages in some quake-hit areas."

The rains were likely to put more pressure on dams and reservoirs weakened by the quake. The storms herald the start of the summer rainy season that accounts for more than 70 percent of the 2 feet of rain that falls on the area each year.The backed-up lake is one of several dozen in Sichuan.In An country, about 30 miles to the south of Beichuan, a landslide blocked the Chaping river, submerging Shuangdian village.Residents say the lake has been rising by about 7½ feet a day."The water was covering the road, and two days later I could not see the roof of my house anymore," said Liu Zhongfu, 31, a truck driver who built his two-story wooden house himself, standing on a mountain overlooking the new lake. A sofa and bits of wood that were once part of houses could be seen floating among the debris in the milky green water.Liu was working away from home when the earthquake hit. His wife, 3-month-old daughter and 60-year-old mother all were unhurt."I thought I could go back but I have nothing now.

My village, it's all become a sea," he said.Water there was backed up 2 miles along the river, said Wang Li, county Communist Party secretary."We need to take care of this soon, this is a serious situation," he said.Elsewhere, 600 people were voluntarily evacuated from Guanzhuang in Qingchuan county because of landslide worries."There's no danger for this exact moment from flooding but we are very worried because the whole mountain is loose," said Ma Jian, a local official.Problems with dams and reservoirs from the earthquake and its aftershocks also have been reported in other provinces.The Water Resources Ministry said Monday that three small reservoirs in Shaanxi province, just north of Sichuan, were in danger of collapse after the strong aftershock Sunday. A total 2,383 reservoirs were in danger across the country, the ministry said.China's top Communist Party leaders said relief efforts should now focus more on resettlement and post-quake reconstruction, but that work to find survivors should not stop.The shift was announced at a meeting of the Political Bureau of the Communist Party of China's Central Committee presided over by President Hu Jintao, Xinhua reported.

Meanwhile, the Education Ministry said it would investigate whether flawed school construction contributed to collapses."We will punish those who cut corners during school building construction and will have zero tolerance for corruption and shoddy school projects," spokesman Wang Xuming said in Beijing.In Mianzhu city, the Communist Party secretary pleaded with protesting parents — whose children were killed in a school collapse — not to complain to higher authorities, the Southern Metropolis Daily newspaper reported Monday.Despite Jiang Guohua's pleas, the parents of the 127 children who died kept marching Sunday and eventually met with higher officials, who told them the government would investigate.The march was the latest example of growing anger among Chinese about the quake, especially the fact that nearly 7,000 schoolrooms were destroyed while school was in session. Parents at several schools have held protests, defying the government's general disapproval of such demonstrations.A photograph on the newspaper's Web site shows Jiang on his knees, his arms outstretched in vain."Please trust that the Mianzhu party committee can solve this problem," he begged the parents. "Don't go!"But the parents marched on, carrying photos of their children."We have no more tears," one mother told the newspaper.Also Monday, Xinhua reported that one of the two pandas still missing after the earthquake had been found.The panda was recovered earlier in the day, but there were no immediate details given on its condition.The pandas had been missing from the famed Wolong panda reserve, located near the epicenter in central Sichuan province. The center suffered heavy damage from the quake and five staff members were killed.

AN XIAN, China (May 20) - China is grappling with the next massive task in the aftermath of its earthquake — how to shelter the 5 million people left homeless. Many were living Tuesday in tent cities like one at the base of Qianfo mountain in the disaster zone, offering some stability — along with food and medical care — to those whose lives were upended."After the quake, we couldn't sleep for five days. We were really, really afraid," said Chen Shigui, a weathered 55-year-old farmer who climbed for two days with his wife and injured father to reach the camp from their mountain village. "I felt relieved when we got here. It's much safer compared to my home."

But there's not enough room to go around.The government issued an urgent appeal Tuesday for tents and brought in the first foreign teams of doctors and field hospitals, some of whom were swapping out with overseas search and rescue specialists.The switch underscored a shift in the response to China's worst disaster in three decades from an emergency stage to one of recovery — and for many, enduring hardship.On the second of a three-day national mourning period, the authoritarian government appeared to be moving to rein in the unusually free reporting it allowed in the disaster's first week.

Most major newspapers carried near-identical photographs on their front pages of President Hu Jintao and other senior leaders with their heads bowed — a uniformity that is typical when state media censors direct coverage.The May 12 earthquake's confirmed death toll rose to more than 40,000, with at least 10,000 more deaths expected, and officials said more than 32,000 people were missing. The State Council, China's Cabinet, said 80 percent of the bodies found in Sichuan province had been either cremated or buried.Authorities rushed to dispose of corpses, burning them or laying them side by side in pits. Vice Minister for Civil Affairs Jiang Li said officials had begun collecting DNA samples from bodies so their identities could be confirmed later.Rescues — becoming more remarkable by the hour — continued on the eighth day since the quake, but the trickle of earlier days had slowed to a drip.

DUJIANGYAN, China - Tang Xiaomin had just left her fourth-floor apartment to buy groceries when the building started to crumble around her.
An upstairs neighbor was thrown against the kitchen table. She grabbed her purse and rushed out. Another resident, pregnant and resting, didn't have time. She became trapped.
The three occupants of the six-story apartment building at 315 Happiness Road were just some of the residents who managed to survive Monday's massive earthquake, although many of their neighbors did not. They endured moments of terror, shock, relief and now worry as they try to rebuild their lives.

"It's hard to take because we never, ever experienced anything like this before," said the short, slender Tang, wearing jeans and a sweatshirt and standing in front of a shelter of plastic sheets, umbrellas and bamboo poles she now calls home.
'Property loss is just huge'Tang, 40 and unemployed, had moved into the newly built apartment 10 years ago, using compensation awarded when the government demolished her former home as part of China's urban renewal boom. The apartment was home to her and her husband, a construction worker, their 16-year-old son, who was at school when the quake struck, and Tang's 61-year-old mother.
The mother was alone in the apartment when the temblor hit. Hours later, rescuers eased her through a gap in the apartment's facade and down to the street below.
The family of four spent Monday night camped under an umbrella in a chilly drizzle, numb from both the cold and their ordeal — but relieved to be alive and together.
"The property loss is just huge, but the people are safe and that's all that matters," Tang said in her sing-songy Sichuan accent.
Covered in dustNeighbor Luo Ying was one flight upstairs from Tang, in a fifth-floor apartment, when the building began shaking at 2:27 p.m.

The department store clerk remembers chunks of tile and cement crashing all around her as she scrambled down five flights of stairs with her neighbors.
"I was covered in dust when I got to the bottom. I didn't dare believe it," she said.
Seeking shelter from the rain, Luo and her neighbors scavenged a canopy from an electronics store promotional event and piled old signboards high with salvaged blankets.
By dusk, about five hours after the quake, police and military units arrived, bringing relief, Luo said, "We knew we weren't alone and that someone would help."
Her husband has taken her daughter to the provincial capital of Chengdu while she remains near the apartment building, watching the rescue teams that clear away rubble and look for bodies with backhoes, cranes and hand tools.

DUJIANGYAN, China - The toll of the dead and missing soared as rescue workers dug through flattened schools and homes on Tuesday in a desperate attempt to find survivors of China's worst earthquake in three decades.

The official Xinhua News Agency said the death toll exceeded 12,000 in Sichuan province alone, and 18,645 were still buried in debris in the city of Mianyang, near the epicenter of Monday's massive, 7.9-magnitude quake.

The Sichuan Daily newspaper reported on its Web site that more than 26,000 people were injured in Mianyang.

The numbers of casualties was expected to rise due to the remoteness of the areas affected by the quake and difficulty in finding buried victims.

There was little prospect that many survivors would be found under the rubble. Only 58 people were extricated from demolished buildings across the quake area so far, China Seismological Bureau spokesman Zhang Hongwei told Xinhua. In one county, 80 percent of the buildings were destroyed.

Rain was impeding efforts and a group of paratroopers called off a rescue mission to the epicenter due to heavy storms, Xinhua reported.

More than two dozen British and American tourists who were thought to be panda-watching in the area also remained missing.

Officials urged the public not to abandon hope.

"Survivors can hold on for some time. Now it's not time to give up," Wang Zhenyao, disaster relief division director at the Ministry of Civil Affairs, told reporters in Beijing.

Premier Wen Jiabao, who rushed to the area to oversee rescue efforts, said a push was on to clear roads and restore electricity as soon as possible. His visit to the disaster scene was prominently featured on state TV, a gesture meant to reassure people that the ruling party was doing all it could.

"We will save the people," Wen said through a bullhorn to survivors as he toured the disaster scene, in footage shown on CCTV. "As long as the people are there, factories can be built into even better ones, and so can the towns and counties."

State media said rescue workers had reached the epicenter in Wenchuan county — where the number of casualties was still unknown. The quake was centered just north of the Sichuan provincial capital of Chengdu in central China, tearing into urban areas and mountain villages.

Earthquake rescue experts in orange jumpsuits extricated bloody survivors on stretchers from demolished buildings.

Some 20,000 soldiers and police arrived in the disaster area with 30,000 more on the way by plane, train, trucks and even on foot, the Defense Ministry told Xinhua.

Aftershocks rattled the region for a second day, sending people running into the streets in Chengdu. The U.S. Geological Survey measured the shocks between magnitude 4 and 6, some of the strongest since Monday's quake.

Zhou Chun, a 70-year-old retired mechanic, was leaving Dujiangyan with a soiled light blue blanket draped over his shoulders.

"My wife died in the quake. My house was destroyed," he said. "I am going to Chengdu, but I don't know where I'll live."

Zhou and other survivors were pulling luggage and clutching plastic bags of food amid a steady drizzle and the constant wall of ambulances.

Just east of the epicenter, 1,000 students and teachers were killed or missing at a collapsed high school in Beichuan county — a six-story building reduced to a pile of rubble about two yards high, according to Xinhua. Xinhua said 80 percent of the buildings had collapsed in Beichuan alone.

At another leveled school in Dujiangyan, 900 students were feared dead. As bodies of teenagers were carried out on doors used as makeshift stretchers, relatives lit incense and candles and also set off fireworks to ward away evil spirits.

Elsewhere in Gansu province, a 40-car freight train derailed in the quake that included 13 gasoline tankers was still burning Tuesday, Xinhua said.

Gasoline lines grew in Chengdu and grocery stores shelves were almost empty. The Ministry of Health issued an appeal for blood donations to help the quake victims.

Fifteen missing British tourists were believed to have been in the area at the time of the quake and were "out of reach," Xinhua reported.

They were likely visiting the Wolong Nature Reserve, home to more than 100 giant pandas, whose fate also was not known, Xinhua said, adding that 60 pandas at another breeding center in Chengdu were safe.

Another group of 12 Americans also on panda-watching tour sponsored by the U.S. office of the World Wildlife Fund remained out of contact Tuesday, said Tan Rui, WWF communications officer in China.

Two Chinese-Americans and a Thai tourist also were missing in Sichuan province, the agency said, citing tourism officials.

Expressions of sympathy and offers of help poured in from the United States, Japan and the European Union, among others.

The Dalai Lama, who has been vilified by Chinese authorities who blame him for recent unrest in Tibet, offered prayers for the victims. The epicenter is just south of some Tibetan mountain areas that saw anti-government protests earlier this year.

Beijing Games organizers said the Olympic torch relay will continue as planned through the quake-affected area next month.

The Chinese government said it would welcome outside aid, and Russia was sending a plane with rescuers and supplies, the country's Interfax news agency reported.

But Wang, the disaster relief official, said international aid workers would not be allowed to travel to the affected area.

"We welcome funds and supplies; we can't accommodate personnel at this point," he said.

China's Ministry of Finance said it had allocated $123 million in aid for quake-hit areas.

The quake was China's deadliest since 1976, when 240,000 people were killed in the city of Tangshan, near Beijing in 1976. Financial analysts said the quake would have only a limited impact on the country's booming economy.

DUJIANGYAN, China - Rescue workers dug through schools and homes turned into rubble by China's worst earthquake in three decades to reach thousands of victims trapped beneath slabs of concrete, as the death toll of 10,000 appeared certain to rise on Tuesday.

A day after the powerful 7.9 magnitude quake struck, state media said rescue workers had only just reached the epicenter in Wenchuan county — cut off by the disaster and where the number of casualties was unknown.

But the official Xinhua News Agency reported 10,000 people "remained buried" in Mianzhu, 60 miles from the epicenter.

Heavy rain, which had contributed to the difficulty of reaching the epicenter, continued to impede efforts and a group of paratroopers called off a mission to the area, Xinhua said.

The tremors caused a wide swath of damage across central China, leveling buildings and severing roads and communications. It sent people rushing out of their offices across the country in Beijing, and was felt as far away as Vietnam.

Nearly 10,000 people died in Sichuan province alone and 300 others in other provinces and the mega-city of Chongqing, Xinhua reported.

Earthquake rescue experts in orange jumpsuits extricated bloody survivors on stretchers from demolished buildings, and some 34,000 troops swarmed into the region to help.

A 40-car freight train with 13 gasoline tankers derailed in the quake and was still burning Tuesday, the agency said, with no word on casualties.

Aftershocks rattled the region for a second day, sending people running into the streets in the city of Chengdu. The U.S. Geological Survey measured the shocks between magnitude 4 and 6, some of the strongest since Monday's quake.

Just east of the epicenter, 1,000 students and teachers were killed or missing at a collapsed high school in Beichuan county. The six- or seven-story building was reduced to a pile of rubble about two yards high, according to Xinhua. Another 900 students were feared dead when their school collapsed in Juyuan, which is in Dujiangyan city.

The Beichuan school had more than 2,000 students and teachers in three school buildings. The other two buildings collapsed partially, Xinhua said.

Up to 5,000 people were killed and 80 percent of the buildings had collapsed in Beichuan, Xinhua said, in a region of small cities and towns set amid steep hills north of Sichuan's provincial capital of Chengdu. The government has poured more than 16,000 troops into the area with tens of thousands more on the way.

In Dujiangyan, rescue teams were trying to get to a woman who was eight months pregnant and trapped in a seven-story apartment building that collapsed.

Nearby, a man in his late 50s who refused to give his name, said his father was missing in the rubble of his home. "Yesterday, when the earthquake happened our home collapsed really quickly and I heard my father yell, 'Help, help, help,'" the man said.

Buildings were knocked down on every block and corpses were laid out in the street. People were seeking rides out of town, where makeshift tent cities were being erected as shelter from rain that began Tuesday and could affect rescue efforts.

Zhou Chun, a 70-year-old retired mechanic, was fleeing toward the city of Chengdu with a soiled light blue blanket draped over his shoulders.

"My wife died in the quake. My house was destroyed," he said. "I am going to Chengdu, but I don't know where I'll live."

Premier Wen Jiabao, who flew to the area to oversee rescue efforts, said a push was on to clear roads and restore electricity as soon as possible.

China's Ministry of Health issued an appeal for blood donations to help the victims of the quake. "There is a large demand for blood in quake-hit areas and we hope the public actively donate blood," spokesman Mao Quan said.

Before the rescue workers arrived, the only previous contact with hard-hit Wenchuan, Xinhua said, was a satellite phone call from the local Communist Party secretary to appeal for air drops of tents, food and medicine. The official, Wang Bin, said there were 57 reported deaths so far, with more than 300 other people seriously injured. He said the figures were likely to rise as there was no information from mountainous areas.

He estimated that at least 30,000 of the county's 105,000 residents slept outside Monday night.

Fifteen missing British tourists were believed to be in that area at the time of the quake and were "out of reach," Xinhua reported.

They were likely visiting the Wolong Nature Reserve, home to more than 100 giant pandas, whose fate also was not known, Xinhua said. It reported that 60 pandas at another breeding center in Chengdu were safe.

Disasters pose a test to China's communist government, whose mandate rests heavily on maintaining order, delivering economic growth and providing relief in emergencies.

Pressure for a rapid response was particularly intense this year, as the government was already grappling with public discontent over high inflation and a widespread uprising among Tibetans in western China while trying to prepare for the Beijing Olympics this August.

Expressions of sympathy and offers of help poured in from the United States, Japan and the European Union, among others. Even rival Taiwan, which is frequently hit by quakes and has highly developed expertise in rescue operations, offered aid.

"I am particularly saddened by the number of students and children affected by this tragedy," President Bush said in a statement. State Department spokesman Sean McCormack said no aid requests had been made by China.

The government said it would welcome outside aid but gave no specifics. Foreign Ministry spokesman Qin Gang said relief authorities "are ready to make contact with relevant countries and organizations."

Russia was sending a plane with rescuers and aid, the country's Interfax news agency reported. China's Ministry of Finance said it had allocated about $123 million, in aid for quake-hit areas.

The quake was China's deadliest since 1976, when 240,000 people were killed in the city of Tangshan, near Beijing in 1976.

The latest quake hit a fault where South Asia pushes against the Eurasian land mass, smashing the Sichuan plain into mountains leading to the Tibetan highlands — near communities that held sometimes violent protests against Chinese rule in mid-March.