Bodies line the streets as quake town's agony laid bare
Pastor Dale Morgan
Bodies line the streets as quake town's agony laid bare*
by Staff Writers
Dujiangyan, China (AFP) May 13, 2008
With at least 15,000 dead and tens of thousands missing, the bodies,
some with stiff forearms in front of their faces reflecting the
desperate final struggle at the moment of death, were unceremoniously
lined up on the road and covered with plastic.
Under a downpour that seemed to never end -- "the heaven is crying" one
resident mused -- members of the paramilitary People's Armed Police
sifted through the rubble of a nearby office building, dragging out the
dead.
An elderly women stepped up in front of one of the bodies, lifted the
plastic sheet, and recognised the battered and bruised corpse as her
son. She broke down wailing loudly as two women tried to comfort her.
Parts of Dujiangyan -- a town with a population of 60,000 people some 50
kilometres (32 miles) from the quake's epicenter -- looked like it had
been the target of an aerial bomb attack.
Broken glass and dust covered shop floors, while a passenger car had
been crushed completely by a toppled concrete pillar.
In one part of the town close to the epicenter of Monday's quake in
China's Sichuan province, rescuers combed through the rubble of a
school, looking for hundreds of students believed to have been buried.
Fifty bodies had already been pulled out.
As the residents woke up shivering and cold to a new day Tuesday, the
air was filled with the sound of sirens.
Shi Huaigui, a 58-year-old retiree, stood amid the rubble of his
devastated town looking for his wife.
Shi had gone to buy groceries, leaving his wife, Cao Dengping, in their
modest apartment to do the laundry, repeating the happy routines of
their marriage of four decades.
"As I was walking back, the earth started swinging to and fro, and I
knew immediately what had happened," said Shi, speaking in the distinct
dialect of southwest China's Sichuan province.
A day after the worst quake to hit China in three decades left tens of
thousands of people dead or missing, Shi was standing in front of the
confused mass of collapsed walls, shattered window frames and muddied
curtains that was his home.
Somewhere in there was his wife.
"All I'm asking is that someone come and start going through the rubble
and dig out the bodies," he said.
Shi had spent the night in the open, sheltered from the relentless rain
by a jacket provided by good friends.
Thousands of others in the city slept outside too, either because they
did not want to go home for fear of aftershocks, or because they no
longer had any home to return to.
"We don't have anything. Nothing to eat or to use as shelter. No one
cares about us," said a middle-aged man, soaking wet after a night in a
small park across from his former home.
Doctors and nurses worked frantically in a makeshift clinic -- a tent
set up in the middle of the road -- making do with what little they had
at their disposal.
"We've been treating 200 injured and received 24 dead, and that's just
in this district," said a doctor who declined to be named.
"There has been no preparation whatsoever. It's really tough."
The major road leading into Dujiangyan was filled with a kilometre-long
traffic jam in both directions as rescue vehicles tried to get in, and
those who could attempted to get out.
Any ticket out of the city was in demand. A yellow pickup truck moved
slowly down the street, already filled with passengers, but followed by
a tail of other begging to come along.
Amid the noise and the chaos stood 38-year-old Wen Xiaobing oblivious to
everything apart from the heap covered by a plastic sheet in front of him.
The heap was his mother, 61-year-old Fu Qunyi, dug out from the rubble
the night before.
"I lost everything. I lost my house and I lost my mother," said Wen.
"My brother is in hospital with severe injuries to his chest. I'm
waiting for someone to come and pick up the body. But no-one has come
yet," he said, stoic like most other men here. And then he started sobbing.