Beijing - Hundreds of thousands of people in south-western China faced a night in the cold and rain on Monday, staying outdoors after fleeing homes destroyed by a devastating earthquake or to avoid the risk from more aftershocks.
Office workers are evacuated from their place of employment in Kunming city which, although some 660 kilometres from the epicenter Wenchuan, still felt the affects of a major earthquake registered at a magnitude of 7.8 in western China's Sicuan province 12 May 2008. EPA/STR
'Many homes have collapsed here,' said a woman in Dujiangyan, Sichuan province, some 100 kilometres from the epicentre of the 7.8- magnitude earthquake.
The woman sent several text messages from Dujiangyan, where roads and telecommunication facilities were severely damaged, saying the earthquake had also destroyed part of her shop in the town.
'Me and my daughter are fine,' she said. 'We are staying in a school playground.'
The woman said she and her daughter had rushed outside and had no time to pick up waterproof jackets or umbrellas to protect them from the rain. 'It's very sad,' she said of their situation.
Thousands of others in Dujiangyan and nearby towns were not so lucky, as the full scale of the devastation gradually became clearer late Monday.
Local residents and rescue workers were searching rubble for up to 900 teenagers believed to be buried under rubble at a collapsed three-storey school in Dujiangyan.
The official Xinhua news agency said some students were 'struggling to break loose from underneath the ruins while others were crying out for help'.
Five cranes were excavating the school site as ambulances waited, the agency said.
Residents told the agency that many children had already escaped from the building.
'Some had jumped out of the window and a few others ran down the stairs that did not collapse,' Dujiangyan resident Gao Shangyuan, who helped with rescue work, told the agency.
The town was one of the worst-hit places in Sichuan, but there was still no news of damage or casualties in Wenchuan, the town closest to the epicentre.
All roads remained cut off to Wenchuan, although it was believed that military helicopters and planes had surveyed the area.
More than 5,000 troops were dispatched to survey damage in Wenchuan and lead relief work, but the destruction of the roads meant the soldiers were forced to remain in Dujiangyan late Monday night.
In nearby Beichuan county, where 80 per cent of buildings were destroyed, officials estimated that between 3,000 and 5,000 people could have died.
The earthquake was the most powerful to hit Sichuan for more than 30 years.
A government seismologist warned residents in earthquake-affected areas not to return to their homes too soon, saying that aftershocks could be just as devastating as the main earthquake.
'A big earthquake could release most, but not all of the underground energy, and its aftershocks may cause natural disasters,' the official Xinhua news agency quoted Zhang Guomin, a researcher from the State Seismological Bureau, as saying.
Sichuan recorded more than 300 aftershocks on Monday and although most were weaker they could still topple buildings already damaged in the earthquake, Zhang said.
'Wenchuan is prone to earthquakes as it is on a major fault line: the south-north fault line that runs from Yunnan to Ningxia (provinces),' he said.
Another expert quoted by state radio said crude stone-built homes in Wenchuan had low ability to withstand a powerful earthquake.
Dozens more towns and cities in Sichuan and neighbouring areas were affected, with state television showing thousands of students filling the streets in the university area of Chengdu, the provincial capital.
Many power and telecommunication lines were also damaged in Sichuan.
Premier Wen Jiabao, who travelled to Sichuan to oversee relief work, called for 'public calm and efficient organization'.
In a televised speech filmed as he was flying to Sichuan on Monday, Wen said the Central Committee of China's ruling Communist Party and the state cabinet had ordered party members and officials at all levels 'work on the front line' of disaster relief.
'My fellow Chinese, facing such a severe disaster, we need calm, confidence, courage and efficient organization,' Wen said in his speech.
'I believe we can certainly overcome the disaster with the public and the military working together under the leadership of the CPC (Communist Party of China) Central Committee and the government.'
© Deutsche Presse-Agentur
John H.May 15th, 2008 - 18:25:00
This terrible tragedy has been reported all over the world and the Chinese response seems to have been quite swift and transparent to the foreign media.
I believe it is a very sad contrast to the totalitarian and massivly represive approach the Chinese government took with regards to openness during the recent revolt in Lhasa/Tibet. It makes me wonder if they are over-publicising a tragedy in order to garner sympathy in order to take the focus off their repressive and immoral code of conduct in other areas?
JH
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