China Sets Mourning Period; Rescues Continue

中港台
China Sets Mourning Period; Rescues Continue
漢 |大 |中 |小
2008年05月19日10:58
China declared three days of national mourning, starting Monday, as a desperate push for survivors continued near the epicenter of last week‘s quake and across Sichuan.
In Yingxiu, armies of rescuers struggled with powerful aftershocks, landslides, torrential rains and unforgiving terrain as they battled to save more victims.
A town of 12,000 people wedged into a mountain valley and cut down the middle by a roaring river, Yingxiu was among the settlements closest to the epicenter of the powerful quake, according to government and military officials.
Almost every building in town has been ruined. Much of the city has been reduced to piles of bricks and concrete. Apartment blocks still standing list dangerously. Smashed cars and downed utility cables litter the streets.
As the fight to rescue the living and recover the dead moved forward, China raised the confirmed death toll from the quake to more than 32,000. The government declared that the Olympic torch relay would be suspended during the days of mourning, which would be marked by a moment of silence at 2:28 p.m. exactly a week after the quake struck.
Chinese seismologists also raised their estimate of the quake‘s magnitude to 8.0, from 7.8. The U.S. Geological Survey has rated the quake a 7.9.
Landslides have blocked rivers and streams in at least 21 places, the official Xinhua news agency reported, causing potentially dangerous buildups of water that could pose a flood risk in already devastated areas. On Saturday, the government evacuated 2,000 people when a blocked river began to overflow and flood a village.
But rescuers haven‘t given up hope yet. Over the weekend, soldiers opened a road into this town in the mountains of central Sichuan, allowing essential supplies and equipment to start flowing in to rescuers and survivors and providing an escape route for those fleeing the destruction.
That puts Yingxiu, about 60 miles west of Chengdu, at the center of what is one of the largest disaster-relief operations in Chinese history. Tens of thousands of soldiers, paramilitary police, rescue workers, civilian officials and volunteers have joined the effort.
Firefighters from Qingdao in eastern China worked into the early hours of the morning Sunday, tunneling into the wreckage of a collapsed office building trying to extricate as many as four people believed to be alive nearly a week after the quake trapped them.
At least one of the people, a 44-year-old woman whose legs were pinned, talked to the rescuers and received food and water, said a firefighter involved in the rescue.
But when an aftershock measuring magnitude-6.1 hit and rain from thunderstorms turned into a downpour, making the building even more unstable, the firemen had to suspend the search. They resumed work at dawn.
The woman, Yu Jinhua, was rescued at 8:10 p.m. Sunday, Xinhua reported. She had been buried for 150 hours. Rescuers spent 56 hours trying to get her out, the report said.
Across the city Sunday, rescuers were out in force. Firefighters from Shanghai used saws and jacks to dig into the ruins of the Ying Dian Hotel. Other firefighters used a crane and their bare hands to pull rubble from the ruins of a primary school, permeated with the smell of dead bodies.
Shang Guoliang, 36 years old, watched from the basketball court in front of the school, a blue surgical mask tied on his face. His son, Shang Qiuyan, 13, a student there, is buried in the wreckage, he said. He and other parents say about 200 children are missing.
‘I‘ve almost lost hope,‘ says Mr. Shang. ‘Even if they survived the collapse, it‘s now the seventh day.‘
There have, however, been some remarkable rescues. Two people were pulled alive from ruined buildings on Saturday, according to doctors at the scene, and sent by helicopter to hospitals in Chengdu.
Since rescue teams first arrived by helicopter the day after the quake, thousands of survivors have been evacuated from the town and more than 300 seriously injured people flown out to hospitals.
A member of one People‘s Armed Police unit that arrived in Yingxiu on Wednesday said debris had sealed off many of the town‘s roads and that there were bodies everywhere. The policeman said his unit was able to help collect bodies and help people near the surface of collapsed buildings.
But, said this man, it was the arrival of firefighters -- who started getting to the town in large numbers by Thursday -- with special equipment that made it possible for more larger-scale and more-sophisticated rescue operations.
The problem of not enough rescue equipment ‘existed in the early stages of the relief effort,‘ across many quake-affected areas, said Ma Gaihe, an army senior colonel, who is director-general of the army‘s Operational Logistics Support Bureau.
Bad weather and severely damaged roads to relatively remote settlements have made it difficult to move heavy equipment into some areas. The effort to build the road to Yingxiu highlights the difficulties troops have faced. And it shows that supply lines remain tenuous, under threat from aftershocks, landslides and heavy rains.
On Saturday, soldiers with shovels worked to shored up a road being built to follow a relatively narrow dirt path used by local farmers, far below the paved highway that ran along the side of the mountains to Yingxiu. That road was blocked by landslides.
An excavator cleared a mudslide that blocked the new route -- on which construction began Thursday -- at dusk on Saturday. And troops moved through immediately. Among them were a detachment of People‘s Armed Police from Chengdu, carrying heavy packs with relief supplies and going in for their second three-day stint in the town.
‘This is a lifeline,‘ said said a People‘s Liberation Army senior colonel helping oversee rescue efforts in Yingxiu. ‘Now, we need to get out to the villages,‘ which are deeper into the mountains.
Along the road early Sunday morning, soldiers from an armored unit based in Henan were carrying rations, tents, generators, medicine and other supplies on their backs as they struggled through thick mud, many with their uniform pants rolled up around their knees. By 10 a.m., vehicles, including ambulances, heavy trucks carrying communications equipment and oil tankers, began to move down the road.
Many people are leaving, flowing out the muddy relief road built by the army to a staging area where they can board a boat for a larger city downstream, Dujiangyan.
But some are opting to stay put. On Sunday, Liu Bangrong, 45, stood on the roof of her collapsed bakery, trying to dig her way inside to get insurance papers, money and food. Her home was also destroyed.
‘I want to stay. There‘s nowhere else to go,‘ says Ms. Liu.
Gordon Fairclough