Power supply was still unable to reach three counties in the southwestern Chinese Sichuan province which were blacked out by the May-12 earthquake, namely Beichuan, Maoxian and Wolong, the State Electricity Regulatory Commission (SERC) said Monday.

Gu Junyuan, the SERC's chief engineer, told a press conference that power supply to the other 16 quake-hit counties and regions in Sichuan had been restored or partly restored, including the epicenter Wenchuan.

Gu said the special power supply system in Sichuan was largely to blame for delaying efforts to restore power supply to the whole province.

According to Gu, of the 54 quake-damaged counties in Sichuan, some were connected with the national power grid while the others were linked to local power grids.

In the wake of the 8.0-magnitude earthquake, local power supply companies were unable to restore supplies quickly enough owing to the shortage of repair teams and machines, said the engineer.

In order to provide electricity for rescue work and medical operations in those three counties, power companies have brought in over 1,100 diesel generating units from other provinces, which have a total capacity of 33,000 kilowatts, said Gu.

In addition, the engineer said the Zipingba dam, near the epicenter of Wenchuan, is stable and safe.

Should the five damaged reservoirs upstream on the Minjiang River, a tributary of the Yangtze River, break, the Zipingba dam would be able to sustain the flood, he said.

The five damaged reserviors upstream have a combined capacity of 1.5 million cubic meters, but the Zipingba reservior's capacity is some 1.1 billion cubic meters, Gu explained.

The earthquake, the most serious in decades, was centered on Wenchuan County in Sichuan Province. It affected eight provinces including Sichuan, Gansu, Shaanxi, Yunnan, Shanxi, Guizhou, Hubei and Chongqing.

The death toll had risen to 34,073 as of 12:00 a.m. Monday, according to the earthquake relief headquarters of the State Council.

(Xinhua News Agency May 19, 2008)