China sifts rubble for quake survivors

15/04/2010| IslamWeb

China has been sifting rubble for survivors of the deadly quake which hit the remote Qinghai region and left thousands of people homeless.

Rescuers continued to search with their bare hands and picks 30 hours after the quake as heavy lifting equipment rolled towards the mountainous area.

Officials say 617 people died and 9,980 were injured when the quake struck Yushu county early on Wednesday.

But 313 people are missing and the death toll is expected to rise.

Long columns of military vehicles carrying diggers and other heavy lifting equipment, along with busloads of rescue workers and lorries full of aid, rumbled all night along the 1,000 km-long (620-mile) motorway separating Yushu from the provincial capital, Xining.

The first of the vehicles are due to arrive in the disaster zone within hours.

Relief flights carrying medical workers and supplies have been landing in Yushu airport but the road to the town of 70,000 people has been blocked by a landslide, the Associated Press news agency reports from Qinghai's provincial capital, Xining.

In the township of Jiegu, 85% of buildings were destroyed, officials say, and state TV has been showing street after street reduced to rubble.

Several schools collapsed and at least 56 students are known to have died, 22 of them in a school in Yushu.

Chinese President Hu Jintao has called for an all-out effort to save as many people as possible and some 5,000 rescuers, including 700 soldiers, have been sent to the disaster area.

The civil affairs ministry said it was to send 5,000 tents, 50,000 coats and 50,000 quilts as local officials in Yushu reported a lack of tents, medicines and medical equipment.

Rescued after 12 hours

Chinese TV showed rescue workers with flashlights searching rubble through the night, in low temperatures, as aftershocks continued.

About 900 people have been pulled out alive since the quake struck at 0749 on Wednesday (2349 GMT Tuesday), at the shallow depth of 10km (six miles), Chinese media say.

It was measured as magnitude 6.9 by the US Geological Survey while the China Earthquake Networks Centre measured it as 7.1.

A group of workers found a girl trapped for more than 12 hours under a heap of debris.

"I can't feel my arm," she said as some rescuers talked to her and fed her water while others searched for pieces of wood to prop up the rubble that had entrapped her.

As she was carefully pulled out carried her to a stretcher, she could be heard saying: "I'm sorry for the trouble. Thank you, I will never forget this."

Wu Yong, a local army commander, said the death toll could rise "as lots of houses collapsed".

Rescue operations were being hampered by the fact that the quake disrupted telecommunications, knocked out electricity and triggered landslides.

'Cries of pain'

In Xining, soldiers, fire-fighters and rescue workers with sniffer dogs thronged the airport, which closed to civilian flights for several hours to make way for relief planes.

Efforts were being slowed down by the lack of jet fuel stored at Yushu airport. Relief planes are having to carry extra fuel, limiting their space for supplies.

As local officials struggled to find accommodation for the thousands of people left homeless, weather forecasters were predicting wind and sleet in the coming days, putting victims at risk of exposure.

Harrowing photographs on Wednesday showed emergency workers removing dust-covered dead infants from rubble.

The high-altitude region is prone to earthquakes but, according to the US Geological Survey, this was the strongest tremor within 100km of the area since 1976.

In 2008, a huge quake struck neighboring Sichuan province, about 800km from Yushu. That left 87,000 people dead or missing and five million homeless.

PHOTO CAPTION

Soldiers of the Chinese Army carry a survivor rescued after strong earthquakes in Yushu County, northwest China's Qinghai Province, Wednesday, April 14, 2010.

BBC