YINHUA, China – Four days after a powerful earthquake turned this picturesque mountain town into a jumble of beams, bricks and gray roof tiles, villagers stood on a knoll to watch rescue workers pick through the remains of a six-story apartment block. At one point came a hush, and then a burst of applause, as a man emerged from a slit in the rubble, his body draped in a floral blanket.
YANG LEI / Xinhua
Lan Xiaodong comforted her husband, Xu Xunhua, who was rescued from debris four days after the massive earthquake in Beichuan county in China's Sichuan province.
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All across devastated Sichuan province, similar moments of hope and survival played out yesterday as soldiers and rescue workers in orange jumpsuits combed through toppled homes and schools.
At least 10 people were pulled out alive, including a nurse extracted from the ruins of a clinic in Beichuan, a man discovered in a collapsed fertilizer plant in Shifang and a man who could be freed only by amputating his arm and leg.
But for every survivor, it seemed, there were hundreds who died in the ruins of the country's worst natural disaster in 30 years. The toll passed 22,000 yesterday afternoon and could climb as high as 50,000, the government said.
A large aftershock in Li county, west of the epicenter, created additional landslides, burying cars, disrupting communication and making even more areas difficult for rescuers to reach, the government said.
Yesterday morning, President Hu Jintao arrived in Sichuan to assess the damage, reaching the city of Mianyang, one of the worst-hit areas. “Quake relief work has entered the most crucial phase,” he said, according to state-run news media. “We must make every effort, race against time and overcome all difficulties.”
Many emergency workers acknowledged, however, that time was running out for the 14,000 people still buried in the far-flung towns and cities devastated by the earthquake.
The government said it was investigating why so many school buildings fell, killing as many as 7,000 students and teachers. It promised to mete out harsh punishment if any wrongdoing was involved.
“If quality problems do exist in the school buildings, we will deal with the persons responsible strictly, with no toleration,” Ha Jin, an official with the Ministry of Education, told the state-run news media.
The government response, by many accounts, has been massive, with more than 110 helicopters airlifting survivors and dropping food and medicine to a score of mountain villages that remain inaccessible. Throughout the region, tens of thousands of soldiers could be seen marching along the road with picks and shovels slung across their shoulders.
A few clambered over the remains of homes spraying disinfectant, a tacit acknowledgment that many of the dead would remain entombed for days to come.
In a departure from its earlier insistence that it could handle the catastrophe on its own, China began accepting outside help.
Search-and-rescue teams from Russia, South Korea, Japan and Singapore have been arriving with sniffer dogs, high-tech listening devices and hydraulic spreaders. The United States agreed to provide Chinese authorities with satellite images of the earthquake zone and two planeloads of relief supplies.
Officials remain particularly worried about a series of weakened dams that threaten thousands of people in Wenchuan and Beichuan, the counties closest to the epicenter.
Tens of thousands are homeless; the city of Shifang alone is housing 50,000 people in 26 tent cities.
