Earthquake in China: Death toll 'expected to exceed 80,000'

[Al-khiyal]

Over 7,000 dead in China quake

May 12, 2008 -- More than 7,600 people have been killed in just one region after a devastating earthquake rocked central China.

About 900 children were trapped after their school collapsed about 60 miles from the epicentre of the 7.8-magnitude quake in Sichuan province.

Another 10,000 are believed hurt by the quake, which struck in the middle of the afternoon when offices, factories and public buildings were full.

[Al-khiyal]

Quake kills thousands in China

CHINA, May 12, 2008: Rescuers were desperately trying to save thousands of people today after a massive earthquake toppled buildings and left whole areas cut off.

Thousands of people were feared dead while 900 teenagers were buried in a collapsed school after the 7.8 quake struck.

Five more schools also collapsed, burying unknown numbers of children.

At least 107 casualties were in the southwest provinces of Sichuan, Gansu and Yunnan, as well as Chongqing, which neighbours Sichuan and has 30million people.

The death toll was expected to rise sharply when authorities and rescue teams made contact with the worst-hit areas of Sichuan. Roads and phone lines were cut off.

The 900 students were buried in the rubble of a three-storey school in the city of Dujiangyan.

Arms and a torso were seen sticking out of the rubble as dozens of people worked to free them, using small mechanical winches or their hands to move concrete slabs.

Four more children died in a separate school collapse in Chongqing, Lirang, while another 10 died and 14 were seriously injured in the northwestern province of Gansu.

Thousands of army troops and police carrying medical supplies were headed to Sichuan.

The airport in Sichuan's provincial capital, Chengdu, was closed and roads were clogged with traffic.

The powerful quake, which struck at 2.28pm (7.28 in Britain) caused buildings to sway across the country and it was also felt as far away as Thailand, Vietnam and Pakistan.

In Beijing and Shanghai, office workers poured into the streets as the tremor hit.

In the capital, which will host the Olympics in August, there was no visible damage.

[Al-khiyal]

Death toll in China earthquake rises to 8,533

CHONGQING, China, May 12, 2008 (AP) - Chinese state media says more than 8,500 have died in Sichuan province alone from a massive earthquake.

The official Xinhua News Agency said that another 10,000 people were believed hurt in 1 of the province's counties after the 7.8-magnitude quake on Monday.

Nearly 900 students were trapped after their school collapsed about 60 miles from the quake's epicenter. Xinhua reported students also were buried under five other toppled schools.

The earthquake struck in the middle of the afternoon when classrooms and office towers were full.

The earthquake was felt as far away as Pakistan, Vietnam and Thailand.

[Al-khiyal]

China earthquake kills thousands

[Al-khiyal]

Report: Death toll in China quake exceeds 12,000

DUJIANGYAN, China, May 13, 2008 -- The toll of the dead and missing soared as rescue workers dug through flattened schools and homes on Tuesday in a desperate attempt to find survivors of China's worst earthquake in three decades.

The official Xinhua News Agency said the death toll exceeded 12,000 in Sichuan province alone, and 18,645 were still buried in debris in the city of Mianyang, near the epicenter of Monday's massive, 7.9-magnitude quake.

The Sichuan Daily newspaper reported on its Web site that more than 26,000 people were injured in Mianyang.

The numbers of casualties was expected to rise due to the remoteness of the areas affected by the quake and difficulty in finding buried victims.

There was little prospect that many survivors would be found under the rubble. Only 58 people were extricated from demolished buildings across the quake area so far, China Seismological Bureau spokesman Zhang Hongwei told Xinhua. In one county, 80 percent of the buildings were destroyed.

Rain was impeding efforts and a group of paratroopers called off a rescue mission to the epicenter due to heavy storms, Xinhua reported.

More than two dozen British and American tourists who were thought to be panda-watching in the area also remained missing.

Officials urged the public not to abandon hope.

"Survivors can hold on for some time. Now it's not time to give up," Wang Zhenyao, disaster relief division director at the Ministry of Civil Affairs, told reporters in Beijing.

Premier Wen Jiabao, who rushed to the area to oversee rescue efforts, said a push was on to clear roads and restore electricity as soon as possible. His visit to the disaster scene was prominently featured on state TV, a gesture meant to reassure people that the ruling party was doing all it could.

"We will save the people," Wen said through a bullhorn to survivors as he toured the disaster scene, in footage shown on CCTV. "As long as the people are there, factories can be built into even better ones, and so can the towns and counties."

State media said rescue workers had reached the epicenter in Wenchuan county — where the number of casualties was still unknown. The quake was centered just north of the Sichuan provincial capital of Chengdu in central China, tearing into urban areas and mountain villages.

Earthquake rescue experts in orange jumpsuits extricated bloody survivors on stretchers from demolished buildings.

Some 20,000 soldiers and police arrived in the disaster area with 30,000 more on the way by plane, train, trucks and even on foot, the Defense Ministry told Xinhua.

Aftershocks rattled the region for a second day, sending people running into the streets in Chengdu. The U.S. Geological Survey measured the shocks between magnitude 4 and 6, some of the strongest since Monday's quake.

Zhou Chun, a 70-year-old retired mechanic, was leaving Dujiangyan with a soiled light blue blanket draped over his shoulders.

"My wife died in the quake. My house was destroyed," he said. "I am going to Chengdu, but I don't know where I'll live."

Zhou and other survivors were pulling luggage and clutching plastic bags of food amid a steady drizzle and the constant wall of ambulances.

Just east of the epicenter, 1,000 students and teachers were killed or missing at a collapsed high school in Beichuan county — a six-story building reduced to a pile of rubble about two yards high, according to Xinhua. Xinhua said 80 percent of the buildings had collapsed in Beichuan alone.

At another leveled school in Dujiangyan, 900 students were feared dead. As bodies of teenagers were carried out on doors used as makeshift stretchers, relatives lit incense and candles and also set off fireworks to ward away evil spirits.

Elsewhere in Gansu province, a 40-car freight train derailed in the quake that included 13 gasoline tankers was still burning Tuesday, Xinhua said.

Gasoline lines grew in Chengdu and grocery stores shelves were almost empty. The Ministry of Health issued an appeal for blood donations to help the quake victims.

Fifteen missing British tourists were believed to have been in the area at the time of the quake and were "out of reach," Xinhua reported.

They were likely visiting the Wolong Nature Reserve, home to more than 100 giant pandas, whose fate also was not known, Xinhua said, adding that 60 pandas at another breeding center in Chengdu were safe.

Another group of 12 Americans also on panda-watching tour sponsored by the U.S. office of the World Wildlife Fund remained out of contact Tuesday, said Tan Rui, WWF communications officer in China.

Two Chinese-Americans and a Thai tourist also were missing in Sichuan province, the agency said, citing tourism officials.

Expressions of sympathy and offers of help poured in from the United States, Japan and the European Union, among others.

The Dalai Lama, who has been vilified by Chinese authorities who blame him for recent unrest in Tibet, offered prayers for the victims. The epicenter is just south of some Tibetan mountain areas that saw anti-government protests earlier this year.

Beijing Games organizers said the Olympic torch relay will continue as planned through the quake-affected area next month.

The Chinese government said it would welcome outside aid, and Russia was sending a plane with rescuers and supplies, the country's Interfax news agency reported.

But Wang, the disaster relief official, said international aid workers would not be allowed to travel to the affected area.

"We welcome funds and supplies; we can't accommodate personnel at this point," he said.

China's Ministry of Finance said it had allocated $123 million in aid for quake-hit areas.

The quake was China's deadliest since 1976, when 240,000 people were killed in the city of Tangshan, near Beijing in 1976. Financial analysts said the quake would have only a limited impact on the country's booming economy.

[Al-khiyal]

L'Algérie présente ses condoléances après le séisme en Chine

Mardi 13 Mai 2008 -- Le président Abdelaziz Bouteflika a fait part mardi de sa «profonde tristesse» devant les victimes causées par le violent séisme qui a frappé lundi le sud-ouest de la Chine, dans un message de condoléances à son homologue chinois Hu Jintaho.

«C'est avec une profonde tristesse que j'ai appris qu'un séisme vient de frapper la région du sud-ouest de la Chine, causant la perte de milliers de vies humaines, un grand nombre de disparus et de blessés, et d'importants dégâts matériels", écrit M. Bouteflika dans ce message. "En cette douloureuse circonstance (...) l'Algérie vous assure de (son)entière solidarité", ajoute le chef de l'Etat algérien. Ce séisme a fait plus de 20.000 morts selon les médias chinois.

[Al-khiyal]

China quake toll hits 15,000 as aid arrives

HANWANG, China, May 14, 2008 (AP) — Military helicopters dropped food and medicine to Chinese earthquake survivors who remained cut off Wednesday in remote mountain villages behind roads clogged by landslides. The official death toll rose to nearly 15,000, and state media said tens of thousands more were buried or missing.

As help began to arrive in some of the hardest-to-reach areas, some victims trapped for more than two days under collapsed buildings were still being pulled out alive. But the enormous scale of the devastation meant that resources were stretched thin, and makeshift aid stations and refugee centers were springing up over the disaster area the size of Maryland.

The official Xinhua News Agency quoted government officials as saying rescuers who hiked Wednesday into the city of Yingxiu in Wenchuan county — the epicenter of Monday's magnitude 7.9 quake — found it "much worse than expected."

The official death toll rose Wednesday to 14,866, Xinhua said, but it was not immediately clear if that number included the 7,700 reported dead in Yingxiu. In Sichuan province alone, another 25,788 people were buried and 14,051 missing, provincial vice governor Li Chengyun said, according to Xinhua.

Unlike previous natural disasters in China, state media has reported prominently on the quake. State television has canceled regular programming to run 24-hour coverage.

Scenes of destruction and death have been shown, along with prominent focus on Premier Wen Jiabao, who rushed Monday to Sichuan to oversee the rescue work. He has been shown crawling into collapsed buildings to urge survivors to hang on, and seen reassuring children who had just lost their parents.

The toll was expected to rise further once rescuers reach other towns in Wenchuan that remain cut off from the Sichuan provincial capital of Chengdu more than two days after the quake. Roads leading to Wenchuan from all directions were still being cleared of debris, Feng Zhenglin, deputy minister of railway and transportation, said in Beijing.

The death toll for Mianyang city was also confirmed at 5,430, up from 3,629, on Wednesday, Xinhua said, with more than 18,000 people there still thought to be buried under crushed buildings.

At a middle school Sichuan province's Qingchuan county where students were taking a noon nap when the quake demolished a three-story building, 178 children were confirmed dead in the rubble and another 23 remained missing, Xinhua said.

Storms that had prevented flights to some of the worst-hit areas finally cleared on Wednesday. Military helicopters were seen flying north over Dujiangyan, and Xinhua said two of them airdropped food, drinking water and medicine to Yingxiu.

Trains were on their way to Sichuan carrying quilts, drinking water, tents and military personnel, Ministry of Railways spokesman Wong Yongping said. All railways in the province were working except for a line where a 40-car freight train was trapped by a landslide in a tunnel and burned, he said.

Rescuers raced to save people trapped under flattened buildings.

A 34-year-old woman who was eight months pregnant was rescued after spending 50 hours under debris in Dujiangyan.

In the Beichuan region, a 3-year-old girl who was trapped for more than 40 hours under the bodies of her parents was pulled to safety, Xinhua said.

Rescuers found Song Xinyi on Tuesday morning, but were unable to pull her out right away due to fears the debris above her would collapse. She was fed and shielded from the rain until rescuers extricated her from the rubble.

Wen looked over her wounds, part of his highly publicized tour of the disaster area aimed at reassuring the public about the government's response and to show the world that the country is ready to host the Beijing Olympics in August. Wednesday's leg of the Olympic torch relay in the southeastern city of Ruijin began with a minute of silence.

Wen said some 100,000 troops and police had been dispatched to the disaster zone. He also visited a school Wednesday in Beichuan where two classroom buildings collapsed in the earthquake, including a school with 2,000 students that state TV said sustained "heavy casualties."

East of the epicenter in the town of Hanwang, the smell of incense hung over a crowd of sobbing relatives who walked among some 60 bodies wrapped in plastic, some covered with tributes of branches or flowers.

Nearby, rescuers in blue uniforms carried more bodies out of a makeshift morgue at the Dongqi sports arena. The dead appeared to have come from heavily damaged apartments and a school behind the arena, where people stood in stunned shock.

People from the town and surrounding areas packed into blue tents provided by disaster relief officials. A clock tower in the town center had stopped at 2:27, the time the quake hit.

The Mianzhu No. 3 Hospital was obliterated, and the seven-story main Hanwang Hospital collapsed, its third floor suddenly smashing to the ground. People on the upper floors climbed out on bed sheets tied together.

Surviving medical staff set up a triage center in the driveway of a tire factory, but could only provide basic care.

"The first day hundreds of kids died when a school collapsed. The rest who came in had serious injuries. There was so little we could do for them," said Zhao Xiaoli, a nurse at Hanwang Hospital, who described herself as "numb."

Emergency vehicle sirens sounded every few minutes. An ambulance drove in, delivering a man pulled from the rubble and covered in dust.

"There will be a lot more people. So many still haven't been found," said Zhao.

Residents complained that delays in aid had caused more deaths in the immediate aftermath of the quake.

Zhang Chuanlin, a 27-year-old factory worker, said his 52-year-old mother was trapped while watching television with her friend. No rescue workers were around so he started to dig by himself.

"No one was helping me and then two strangers came and dug through the rubble. They found her an hour later," he said. "When they pulled her out I couldn't look, I just couldn't look when they pulled her out."

A man who gave only his surname Li said he had suffered a double tragedy. His wife was killed while watching TV with Zhang's mother and his daughter died when her school collapsed.

The child did not die right away and could be heard saying, "Please help me daddy, please rescue me," right after the earthquake, he said, but there were no authorities to save her.

In Dujiangyan, a mother pleaded with police for information about her husband who was working in Wenchuan, blocking one of the few roads leading to the epicenter.

"I've begged and begged them to help me look for my husband," Li Zhenhua said, showing her husbands ID card to a crowd of onlookers. "I can't go by myself because I've got a little baby and elderly parents here, so I can't leave."

"The government is doing nothing for us. The government won't help us," she said, over and over.