China Digs for Quake Survivors as 25,000 People Remain Trapped
By William Bi and Aaron Sheldrick
May 14 (Bloomberg) -- Chinese disaster workers, battling bad weather and rubble-strewn roads, tried to reach an estimated 25,000 people trapped under debris after the strongest earthquake in more than half a century.
Ambulances and double-decker buses packed with rescue workers streamed along the main highway from Chengdu, the capital of Sichuan province, to Dujiangyan, the center of relief operations. The 7.9-magnitude quake two days ago killed at least 14,866 people, according to state-run China Central Television.
About 100,000 relief workers, including soldiers, police and medical teams, are working in the affected areas, Prime Minister Wen Jiabao said on state television. More troops arrived in Wenchuan, a city of 118,000 about 42 kilometers (26 miles) from the epicenter and along the highway from Dujiangyan.
``Our top task now is to save lives, as many as possible,'' Wang Zhenyao, director of the disaster relief department of the Ministry of Civil Affairs, said at a news conference in Beijing yesterday broadcast on state television. ``It is not the time to talk about giving up.''
The quake has left an estimated 64,746 people injured in Sichuan Province, state-run Xinhua news agency reported.
Some 2,000 troops have been sent to work on the Zipingku Dam, upriver from Dujiangyan in Sichuan province, the Associated Press said, where cracks have been detected, the agency said, citing state media.
Tents were pitched in soccer fields and vehicles waved through toll booths without charge on the highway into Dujiangyan. On the outskirts of the town, local residents provided food and water from makeshift stands. Some complained about delays in helping survivors.
Local Government
``The local government is nowhere in sight,'' Pu Juan, a resident, said on Jincheng Road in Dujiangyan. ``We are very disappointed that there's been no action. The only help we've received has come from the initiatives of our neighbors.''
Rescue workers are searching for 30 missing patients and employees at Dujiangyan Hospital. Eighty bodies have been recovered and 20 survivors pulled from the rubble of the hospital, which collapsed after the quake.
In Beichuan county, in southwestern Sichuan, rescue workers pulled a three-year-old girl out of the rubble from under the bodies of her dead parents. The girl had survived, with serious leg injuries, after being buried for more than forty hours, Xinhua reported. Eighty-four survivors have been found in Sichuan Province so far.
In the province's Quinchuan County, 178 students were killed when a school building collapsed during the quake, Xinhua reported, while a further 139 pupils escaped.
Yingxiu Town
Three-quarters of the 10,000 residents of Yingxiu town in Wenchuan County died in the quake, Xinhua said. It didn't say whether they were included in its official toll. In Mianyang, a city of more than 5 million west of Wenchuan, more than 18,000 people are estimated to be buried.
The candor about the quake and access to Chinese leaders contrasts with the media lockdown during Tibetan riots two months ago, when the leadership stayed at home and sealed off the region. Wen's rapid response also signals a determination to avoid missteps that followed January's deadly snow storms and the 2003 SARS outbreak and shore up support for the ruling Communist Party.
``There's very little effort to control information,'' said Huang Jing, a visiting senior fellow at the National University of Singapore East Asian Institute. ``Compared with the Tibet crisis, it looks almost like two governments.''
Aftershocks Continue
Aftershocks continued to rattle the region, disrupting search and rescue efforts and keeping survivors huddled in the rain outside shattered buildings. A 5.4-magnitude quake that was 10 kilometers deep hit today at 10:54 a.m. local time, the U.S. Geological Survey said on its Web site.
Rain that hampered rescue efforts for the past two days eased and eight planes took off to drop supplies on Wenchuan and other areas, China Central Television said in its latest update. Wen arrived in Qushan County 2 kilometers from Wenchuan at about 10 a.m. local time today, Xinhua said. Later, he returned to Chengdu.
Two helicopters flew into Wenchuan earlier today, dropping medicine, food and tents, Xinhua said. More than 800 police officers and soldiers have arrived in the city, which was cut off until yesterday, and about 100 paratroopers landed in the area at 12:20 p.m. local time today, it said.
Relief Supplies
Nine trains carrying 14,000 troops were scheduled to arrive in the ``affected area'' today, Wang Yongping, a spokesman for the Ministry of Railways, said at a news conference in Beijing. They're part of a convoy of 50 trains containing goods for use by the military that are being sent to the area. By 6 a.m. tomorrow, 15 more trains will have arrived, Wang said. A further 619 train carriages loaded with tents, fuel and food are also being sent, Wang said.
State Grid Corp. of China, the nation's largest electricity distributor, has meanwhile restored power to almost 300,000 homes.
The weather forecast in the affected region is for cloudy conditions for the next two days, according to the China Meteorological Administration's Web site.
About 3.5 million homes were damaged or destroyed across Sichuan, Xinhua said, citing Vice Governor Li Chengyun. More than 2,000 students and teachers were buried in schools in Sichuan province, CCTV said.
Xinhua's death toll includes 206 in Gansu province north of Sichuan and 103 in Shaanxi to the northwest.
Flights to Sichuan are restricted to relief supplies and authorities called on passengers to avoid flying in central and southwestern China. The rail link between Baoji in Shaanxi and Chengdu is still closed, the Ministry of Railways said. Chinese shipments of steel, copper and other commodities have been disrupted by the quake.
Clearer Picture
It may be a week before a full assessment of casualties, damage and the needs of survivors is made, Nan Buzard, senior director of international disaster response at the American Red Cross, said on Bloomberg Television.
``Communications are very patchy,'' she said yesterday.
The government increased the allocation for disaster relief by more than four times to 860 million yuan ($123 million), the Ministry of Finance said in a statement yesterday.
China will ``welcome help and assistance from the international community,'' Foreign Ministry spokesman Qin Gang said at a regular news briefing in Beijing yesterday.
International relief officials said efforts to respond simultaneously to the China quake and the May 3 Myanmar cyclone, while difficult, aren't unprecedented. In 2004 and 2005, relief agencies raised money for victims of Hurricane Katrina in the U.S., the Indian Ocean tsunami and an earthquake in Pakistan.
Three Gorges Dam
No damage was reported at the Three Gorges Dam, the world's largest hydroelectric dam, located about 760 kilometers from the quake's epicenter, Xinhua said.
The quake may fuel price increases in corn and soybeans after the disaster threatened to disrupt domestic supplies, analysts said.
Food prices in China already were expected to rise by an average of 10 percent or more this year as demand outpaces farm production and record global prices boost import costs, the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences said in an April 29 report. The quake struck on May 12 at 2:28 p.m., about 75 kilometers from Chengdu, a metropolitan area that is home to 11 million people about 1,500 kilometers southwest of Beijing.
The quake was the world's strongest since an 8.5-magnitude temblor struck Indonesia in September, according to the USGS. It was the most powerful to hit China since a magnitude-8.6 quake struck Tibet in 1950, killing 1,526 people. A 7.5-magnitude quake killed 250,000 people in northeastern China's Tangshan in 1976, according to the USGS.
USGS defines an earthquake of magnitude 7 or more as ``major,'' and one above 8 as ``great.''
There are 17 quakes measuring 7 to 7.9 annually worldwide on average, USGS said on its Web site, with five occurring so far this year. On average, there is one temblor annually measuring 8 or more.
To contact the reporters on this story: William Bi near quake zone at wbi@bloomberg.net; Aaron Sheldrick in Tokyo at asheldrick@bloomberg.net. Last Updated: May 14, 2008 11:01 EDT
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