Chinese army go into the geoengineering business

As a follow-up to Anne’s post yesterday, it seems that the state of the Tangjiashan ‘quake lake’, near Biechaun – formed by landslide damming in the aftermath of the Sichaun earthquake – is rapidly becoming the focus of major concern. According to the BBC, the water level is quickly approaching the lip of the dam, at a rate that can only be accelerated by the storms forecast for the next couple of days.
So, whilst tens of thousands of people are being evactuated from the vicinity, the Chinese army is apparently also taking a more direct approach to alleviating the danger: breaching the barrier in a controlled fashion, using explosives. If that sounds like a contradiction in terms to you, I am also worrying about how much potential is there for this to go horribly wrong; but creating a small hole through the blockage should allow the 130 million cubic metres of trapped water to escape more gradually downstream than would be the case if the entire dam collapsed. Fingers crossed…