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About 10,000 people dead in killer earthquake |
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 apollo 2008-5-13 10:32:00 |
(chinadaily.com.cn)
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 Premier Wen Jiabao(C) arranges relief work with officials onboard the plane to quake-stricken area on May 12, 2008. [Xinhua] |
Of the killed, 8,993 were in Sichuan, 132 in Gansu, 85 in Shaanxi, eight in Chongqing and one in Yunnan, the ministry said.
The Sichuan provincial seismological bureau said more than 1,180 tremors up to six magnitude have been recorded as of 5:00 am on Tuesday.
The government in Shifang City of Deyang City, where a major chemical leak happened after the quake, said about 600 people died, including 81 students. The government expected that as many as 2,300 people are still buried, including 920 students.
In Anxian County of Mianyang City, about 500 people died, and 85 percent of the houses in rural areas collapsed.
In another badly-hit city of Mianzhu, which is less than 50 kilometers away from the quake epicenter, more than 1,000 people were reported dead and another 5,000 were buried as of 11:30 pm on Monday, according to the local government.
Hanwang Township of Mianzhu, which is less than 30 kilometers away from Wenchuan and has a population of more than 60,000, suffered serious casualties though exact number is not available.
Zheng Zemin, deputy secretary-general with the Mianzhu Municipal Committee of the Communist Party of China, said the city is in desperate need of drinking water, food, medicines, tents and professional rescuers and equipments.
Chinese President Hu Jintao, who had just completed a 5-day official visit to Japan, has ordered prompt rescue efforts to take care of the affected. Premier Wen Jiaobao has cut short his inspection trip in central Henan Province, and have flown to Chengdu to lead the government rescue efforts.
Late Monday evening, President Hu urged governments at all levels to regard relieving major quake as the top priority at a Politburo standing committee meeting on late Monday evening.
Presided over by Hu, the meeting called on disaster relieving personnel to go to the quake hit areas as soon as possible and mount all-out efforts to save the injured.
And in Dujiangyan, Premier Wen Jiabao has pledged to save as many lives as the rescue teams can in southwest China's Sichuan Province which was hit by a major quake on Monday afternoon.
Wen inspected a hospital and a school in Dujiangyan, a city northwest of the provincial capital Chengdu, partly damaged by the quake.
The road from Dujiangyan to Wenchuan, epicenter of the quake, was blocked by rock and mud slides, holding up rescue, medical and other disaster relief teams in the city.
The rescuers were stranded about 10 kilometers from the county.
"Please just hold on, people are going to get you out of there! " the Premier told the people trapped in the collapsed buildings of the hospital in a loudspeaker.
When comforting patients and medical staffs in the hospital, Wen asked rescuing troops to search every corner for people waiting for salvation and carry out the rescue work in an orderly way.
"If there is a gleam of hope, we will do all the best to save the people," Wen vowed at a middle school of Juyuan town, adding that the rescuing team would not rest until the last one under the ruin was saved.
"The medical experts are coming, the rescuing planes will land soon," Wen told people crying for help in the school, "I was told many trapped people have hopes to survive from the disaster."
He made a three-time bow to pay his respect to the bodies of the people killed by the quake laid on the school's square, saying that he was very depressed.
Premier Wen told officials at the temporary headquarters for disaster relief in Dujiangyan that roads to Wenchuan should be recovered as soon as possible at all costs.
"The road is the key for the relief work since we can only know the situation there when we can send people and we can only transport the injured out when the road is clean," Wen said.
China's state seimological administration reported the earthquake hit Sichuan Province at 2:28 pm Beijing Time Monday, at a destructive scale of 7.8 on the Richter calculations. The US Geologocial Survey said on its website that the epicentre lies 29 kilometres below the surface, and at a scale of 7.5.
More than 5,000 PLA officers and soliders and 3,000 police have also rushed to Wenchuan and surrounding areas to spearhead the rescue efforts.
Premier Wen told reporters during his flight to Sichuan that the central government is closely monitoring the disaster relief work, and Wen urged for calm, efficiency and confidence in fighting the killer tremor.
"I will be in charge of relief work headquarters that has been set up with eight State Council departments," Wen said.
Chinese reporters in Juyuan town, about 60 miles from the epicenter, said that they saw trapped teenagers struggling to break loose from underneath the rubble of the three-story building "while others were crying out for help."
Two teenage girl students were quoted as saying they escaped because they had "run faster than others."
 Rescue workers search for victims in debris in Dujiangyan, Southwest China's Sichuan Province on May 12, 2008. An earthquake measuring 7.8 on the Richter scale jolted nearby Wenchuan County at 14:28 Monday. [Xinhua] |
"The medical experts are coming, the rescuing planes will land soon," Wen told people crying for help in the school, "I was told many trapped people have hopes to survive from the disaster."
He made a three-time bow to pay his respect to the bodies of the people killed by the quake laid on the school's square, saying that he was very depressed.
Premier Wen told officials at the temporary headquarters for disaster relief in Dujiangyan that roads to Wenchuan should be recovered as soon as possible at all costs.
"The road is the key for the relief work since we can only know the situation there when we can send people and we can only transport the injured out when the road is clean," Wen said.
In Chengdu, the quake crashed telephone networks and hours later left parts of the city of 10 million in darkness.
"We can't get to sleep. We're afraid of the earthquake. We're afraid of all the shaking," said 52-year-old factory worker Huang Ju, who took her ailing, elderly mother out of the Jinjiang District People's Hospital. Outside, Huang sat in a wheelchair wrapped in blankets while her mother, who was ill, slept in a hospital bed next to her.
Meawhile, Wenchuan county officials appealed for emergency air drops of tents, food and medicine. "We also need medical workers to save the injured people here," said a county official.
"I am particularly saddened by the number of students and children affected by this tragedy," US President George W. Bush said in a statement.
International Olympic Committee President Jacques Rogge sent his condolences to President Hu Jintao, adding: "The Olympic Movement is at your side, especially during these difficult moments. Our thoughts are with you."
The quake was the deadliest since one in 1976 in the city of Tangshan east of Beijing that killed 240,000, the most devastating in modern history. A 1933 quake near where Monday's struck killed at least 9,000, according to geologists.
Monday's quake occurred on a fault where South Asia pushes against the Eurasian land mass, smashing the Sichuan plain into mountains leading to the Tibetan highlands.
In Chengdu, the region's commercial center, the airport closed for seven hours, reopening only for emergency and a few outbound flights. A major railway line to the northeast was ruptured, stranding about 10,000 passengers, Xinhua said. Although most of the power had been restored by nightfall, phone and Internet service was spotty and some neighborhoods remained without power and water.
Although initially measured at 7.8 magnitude, the US Geological Survey later revised its assessment of the quake to 7.9. Its depth -- about 29 kilometres below the surface, according to the USGS -- gave the tremor such wide impact, geologists said.
The earthquake also rattled buildings in Beijing, causing evacuations of office towers. People ran screaming into the streets in other cities, where many residents said they had never felt an earthquake.
In Beijing, where hundreds of thousands of foreign visitors are expected for the Olympics, stadiums, arenas and other venues for the games were unaffected.