China quake death toll passes 20,000
Pastor Dale Morgan
China quake death toll passes 20,000*
From correspondents in Beijing
May 14, 2008 05:16pm
Article from: Agence France-Presse
THE full horror of the devastating China earthquake began to emerge
today as rescuers discovered whole towns all but wiped off the map,
pushing the death toll well above 20,000.
Military and police teams punched into the heart of the disaster zone,
with 100 troops parachuting into a county that was previously cut off
while planes and helicopters air-dropped emergency supplies.
But the message that came back from this mountainous corner of
southwestern Sichuan province was that town after town was flattened by
the 7.9-magnitude quake that struck two days ago.
The death toll has soared well above 20,000, but that toll is rising by
the hour as more information comes in from stricken communities.
"The losses have been severe," Wang Yi, who heads an armed police unit
sent into the epicentre zone, was quoted as saying by Sichuan Online
news site.
"Some towns basically have no houses left. They have all been razed to
the ground."
At least 7700 people died in the small town of Yingxiu alone, state
media cited a local government official as saying, with only 2300 surviving.
Across Sichuan, countless thousands more people are missing or buried
under the rubble of shattered homes, schools and factories.
Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao said 100,000 military personnel and police
had been mobilised, indicating the epic scale of the country's worst
earthquake in a generation.
The air drop started with planes and helicopters flying dozens of
sorties, dropping tonnes of food and relief aid into the worst-hit zone,
most of it cut off from the outside world by landslides and road closures.
The destruction around the epicentre in remote Wenchuan county is
massive, with whole mountainsides sheared off, highways ripped apart and
building after building levelled.
Rescue teams have been seen pulling bodies and badly injured survivors
out of the ruins.
As well as Yingxiu, CCTV television said air drops were also made in
nearby Mianyang - where the death toll jumped to nearly 5500 - as well
as Mianzhu and Pengzhou.
Helicopters also flew to Wenchuan with food, drinks, tents,
communications equipment and other supplies.
The rescue effort has been badly disrupted since Monday by heavy rain,
and the Meteorological Authority forecasting more later in the week,
raising the risk of fresh landslides.
Amid the setbacks, the nation focused on the precious minutes going by
for those who were buried under rubble but may have survived.
Cries for help were heard from a flattened school in Yingxiu, where
people were forced to try and dig out survivors with their hands, state
media said.
"The situation in Yingxiu is even worse than expected," one local
official said.
In towns and villages across a swathe of Sichuan, heart-rending scenes
were played out as grief-stricken families searched for missing loved ones.
In the city of Mianzhu, where at least 3000 died, rescuers picked
through twisted metal and concrete trying to find people whose voices
could be heard under the rubble.
"My younger brother is in there," 42-year-old Li - his eyes bloodshot
from sleep deprivation - said next to a heap that was once a bank.
The local disaster relief headquarters said rescuers had been able to
pull 500 people alive out of the debris of collapsed buildings, but
20,000 in three outer villages were still out of reach.
Today's leg of the Olympic torch relay in eastern Jianxi province began
with a minute's silence before the runners set off.
Organisers of the Beijing Olympics said they would scale down the relay
as the torch makes it way to the capital for the August Games, a further
knock to its troubled round-the-world journey after earlier protests
over Tibet.
World powers including the United States, European Union and United
Nations as well as the International Olympic Committee have rallied
round with offers of help.
China welcomed the offers but said conditions were "not yet ripe" to
allow in foreign rescue teams, citing damage to transport links.
A Japanese foreign ministry official in charge of emergency aid said
Japan offered rescue teams with sniffer dogs, but China had made no request.
US President George W Bush and his Chinese counterpart Hu Jintao
discussed the disaster by telephone, with Washington offering half a
million dollars in initial disaster aid.