HATTIAN BALA, Feb 23: When the Oct 8 earthquake split a Pakistani mountain, two villages and 560 people were buried under a 2.1 kilometre (1.3 mile) long rock slide. Now the huge pile of earth and boulders, some as big as small cars, is threatening Hattian Bala, a village of 1,500 homes, as the approaching monsoon season poses new dangers of flooding, officials said on Thursday.

The rubble has blocked two streams, forming dams that could collapse in a rainy season deluge.

The government has determined that such dam collapses would inundate Hattian Bala as well as destroy a nearby bridge, army engineer Lt-Col Zulfiqar Ali Janjua said.

The government has set a June 25 deadline for excavating two spillways that will reduce the dams’ capacities. Work began last month and the smaller spillway was recently completed.

Hattian Bala is regarded to be in the most extreme danger and the government has earmarked Rs60 million ($1 million; euro840,000) to correct the water flow.

But other communities threatened by similar newly-formed dams will have to move.

“All along the fault line, there are numerous lakes (created by landslides), but they are marginally stable because they’re not yet full,” Mr Janjua said.

Teams of government surveyors and geologists are studying the lakes and will report next month on which villages will be at risk during the monsoon season, which begins in July.

Having weathered the 7.6-magnitude earthquake, thousands of people would then learn they had to shift homes because of the threat of flooding, he said.

“Wherever locations are identified as potential hazards, they will be forced to move,” Mr Janjua said.

Upstream from Hattian Bala, the spillway on the smaller dam, Tang Nullah, was completed with the excavation of 45,000 cubic meters (59,000 cubic yards) of rubble.

But the second at Karli Nullah will require the blasting and digging away by heavy earth moving equipment of 825,000 cubic meters (1.1 million cubic yards) of rubble to bring the wall down 30 meters(100 feet), Mr Janjua said.—AP