Troops hike
to quake-buried Chinese villages
MIANYANG, China
(AP) - Soldiers hiking over landslide-blocked roads reached the
epicenter of China's devastating earthquake Tuesday, pulling
bodies and a few survivors from collapsed buildings. The death
toll of more than 12,000 was certain to rise as the buried were
found.
Rescuers worked
through a steady rain searching wrecked towns across hilly stretches
of Sichuan province that were stricken by Monday's magnitude-7.9
quake, China's deadliest in three decades. Tens of thousands
spent a second night outdoors, some sleeping under plastic sheeting,
others bused to a stadium in the city of Mianyang, on the edge
of the disaster area.
Street lamps
were switched on in Mianyang on Tuesday night, but all the buildings
were dark and deserted after the government ordered people out
of them for fear of aftershocks. Security guards were posted
at apartment blocks to keep people out.
The industrial
city of 700,000 people - home to the headquarters of China's
nuclear weapons design industry - was turned into a thronging
refugee camp, with residents sleeping outdoors.
"I'm cold.
I don't dare to sleep, and I'm worried a building is going to
fall down on me," said Tang Ling, a 20-year-old waitress
wrapped in a borrowed pink down jacket and camped outside the
Juyuan restaurant with three co-workers. "What's happened
is so cruel. In one minute to have so many people die is too
tragic."
As night fell,
a first wave of 200 soldiers entered the town of Wenchuan, near
the epicenter, trudging across ruptured roads and mudslides,
state television said. Initial reports from troops said one nearby
town could account for only 2,300 survivors out of 9,000 people,
China Central Television said.
At least 12,012
deaths occurred in Sichuan alone while another 323 died in five
other provinces and the metropolis of Chongqing, state media
reported. That toll seemed likely to jump sharply as rescue teams
reached hard-hit towns.
The devastation
and ramped-up rescue across large, heavily populated region of
farms and factory towns strained local governments. Food dwindled
on the shelves of the few stores that remained open. Gasoline
was scarce, with long lines outside some stations and pumps marked
"empty."
Buses carried
survivors away from Beichuan, which was flattened - a few buildings
standing amid piles of rubble in a narrow valley, according to
CCTV video.
More than 10,000
people from there and surrounding areas packed Mianyang's Jiuzhou
Gymnasium, with empty water bottles, boxes of instant noodles
and cigarette cartons littering the ground.
"I saw rocks
and earth rolling down the hill, and they destroyed whatever
they hit below," said a farmer who only gave his surname,
Chen, from the village of Leigu near Beichuan. "There's
nothing I can do about this. It's all in the hands of the government."
In the provincial
capital of Chengdu, FM-91.4 all-traffic radio station operated
around the clock, reading text messages sent by survivors of
stricken areas to let relatives know they are alive.
The government's
high-gear response aimed to reassure Chinese while showing the
world it was capable of handling the disaster and was ready for
the Aug. 8-24 Olympics in Beijing. Although the government said
it welcomed outside aid, officials said that the assistance would
be confined to money and supplies, not to foreign personnel.
As Prime Minister
Wen Jiabao crisscrossed the disaster area to oversee relief efforts,
the official Xinhua news agency cited the Defense Ministry as
saying that some 20,000 soldiers and police arrived in the disaster
area, with 30,000 more on the way by plane, train, truck and
on foot.
"We will
save the people," Wen said through a bullhorn to survivors
in Shifang, where two chemical plants collapsed and buried more
than 600 people, according to CCTV. "As long as the people
are there, factories can be built into even better ones, and
so can the towns and counties."
The Finance Ministry
said it had allocated $123 million in quake aid.
At the world
famous Wolong National Nature Reserve, all 86 pandas were reported
safe late Tuesday in the first word since communications with
the preserve were cut off. A group of 31 British tourists panda-watching
in the preserve also returned safely to Chengdu, the Foreign
Ministry said, although there was no word on 12 missing Americans
on a World Wildlife Fund tour.
Still, prospects
for survivors in the quake zone dwindled. Only 58 people were
pulled from demolished buildings across the quake area so far,
China Seismological Bureau spokesman Zhang Hongwei told Xinhua.
Weeping parents
held a vigil in a steady outside a collapsed school in the town
of Juyuan, where more than 900 high school students were initially
trapped. Only one survivor has been found: a girl pulled free
by rescue team.
Bowing to public
calls, Beijing Olympics organizers scaled down the boisterous
torch relay, saying Wednesday's leg in the southeastern city
of Ruijin would begin with a minute of silence and more somber
ceremonies. People along the route for the torch, which next
month is scheduled to arrive in quake-hit areas, would be asked
for donations, an organizing committee spokesman said.
In the areas
around Mianyang, more than 7,300 people died and 18,000 more
were believed trapped in rubble, most in Beichuan. Amid the rubble,
CCTV showed the six-story Beichuan Hotel listing, half its first
story collapsed. Medical teams tried to treat the wounded in
dirt courtyards littered with broken furniture and concrete.
Though Wen and
others called for air drops of emergency supplies to hard-to-reach
areas, rain impeded efforts for a second day, and Xinhua said
a group of paratroopers called off a rescue mission.
France's nuclear
protection watchdog said it did not know whether there had been
any damage to Chinese nuclear facilities in the quake region.
Without giving specifics, the Institute for Radiological Protection
and Nuclear Safety said "some" facilities were less
than 60 miles from the epicenter.
Strong aftershocks
- one of magnitude-6, according to Chinese seismologists - hit
Chengdu, the region's usually busy commercial center.
Expressions of
sympathy and offers of help poured in from Japan and the European
Union. Russia was sending a plane with 30 tons of relief supplies,
the Interfax news agency said. Chinese President Hu Jintao discussed
the disaster by phone with President Bush.
The U.S. is offering
an initial $500,000 in relief in anticipation of an appeal by
the International Red Cross, White House spokeswoman Dana Perino
said.
While welcoming
the support, the Chinese government suggested that aid would
be confined to supplies and money, not foreign personnel.
"We welcome
funds and supplies. We can't accommodate personnel at this point,"
Wang Zhenyao, the Civil Affairs Ministry's top disaster relief
official, told reporters in Beijing.
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 skirts the Tibetan highlands, where some communities
staged anti-government protests in March.
Seismologists
said the quake was on a level the region sees once every 50 to
100 years. The region's last strong quake was in 1933, when a
magnitude 7.5 quake killed more than 9,300 people. Monday's quake
was powered up the pent-up stress, experts said.
"I don't
think this is unheard of," said Amy Vaughn of the U.S. Geological
Survey. "It's more an issue of how long and how much stress
has been built up in this region."
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