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crisis crews worked Friday to secure 15 sources of radiation buried in the rubble of China’s devastating tremor, the administration said as it evacuated thousands of survivors downstream from rivers dammed by landslides.Officials precariously balanced their efforts to clean up and rebuild with attempts to house, feed and treat the displaced and injured and search for survivors.One senior official said China faces “a daunting face” to prevent environmental contamination from other sources.

He said 50 sources of radiation were hidden by debris from the May 12 earthquake in central China, 35 of which had been safe. The rest lay buried or located but unreachable under collapsed buildings. He gave no essentials about the radiation sources.The number of unsecured radiation sources was far higher than the two the administration reported earlier this week. Foreign experts say the radioactive source likely came from materials used in hospitals, factories or in research, not for weapons.

Wu caution that a number of other “hidden” sources of pollution are likely to be encountered as workers begin digging into the rubble, which includes many factories and refineries.The worst-hit areas in Sichuan province include many high-risk petrochemical and chemical companies, he said. Around three-fourths of the more than 100 chemical plants in the disaster zone were forced to stop production because of damage, he said.As the government uncontrollably to bring relief to the shocked areas of Sichuan, it was evacuating thousands downstream from rivers that were blocked by landslides.

The administration was shifting focus to reconstruction and away from the search for survivors and bodies among the wreckage.Chinese banks were told Friday to forgive debts owed by survivors in an effort to revive the economy, and the government warned it was cracking down on price-gouging by merchants in the disaster area.In the Sichuan provincial capital of Chengdu, a Dutch rescue and recovery team with sniffer dogs complained that soldiers repeatedly prevented it from entering disaster areas, abandoning the search for survivors and bodies to focus on transformation.Six pandas were moved Friday from a damaged panda-breeding base in Wolong near the epicenter because of food shortages, the administrator Xinhua News Agency whispered. They were taken to another safeguard in Sichuan, next to a city call Ya’an.