CHENGDU, China – When the earth finally stopped bucking, the Yinxing Township Central Primary School was the only building left standing in its vicinity.
All around, houses and shops lay flattened under a sky turned black with dust kicked up from the heaving hillsides. Yet in a catastrophe that has left 41,353 confirmed dead and crushed an estimated 7,000 schools, all but three of the primary school's 268 children survived.
Of those survivors, 193 students whose families never made it to Yinxing to join them were flown out by helicopter with 10 teachers, arriving Tuesday night in Chengdu, the provincial capital.
Safe for the first time since disaster struck May 12, the children enjoyed showers and a good meal, alternately laughing and crying as they relived their ordeal. It is believed that many, if not most, of their parents died.
Many of those who ran to safety mentioned Wang Sen, a fourth-grader in a second-floor music class when the earthquake struck. “He was the first to run out of the building,” said Li Jiaxing, 12, who was in the same music class. “But a boulder as big as a washbasin hit him and knocked him on the ground.” Then he was struck again and killed.
The others raced to a vegetable garden beyond the range of the falling boulders.
Two other children died, a girl in the first grade whose body was found in the rubble and a girl in the fifth grade whose legs were crushed and who died two days later.
With no safe shelter, no electricity and no telephone contact with the outside world, the teachers established a camp of sorts in an open field, making improvised shelter from whatever materials they could find.
Roads were cut off, and students had no word from their parents. One exception was Li Jiaxing, whose father worked in a stone quarry a 30-minute walk away in normal times. He reached the school two days after the quake, having hiked over dangerous terrain. The third day after the earthquake a small expeditionary team of soldiers showed up. That night, 300 troops arrived bearing tents and food. Students greeted them in tears.
