• English Site
• > World
• > China

Earthquake Aftermath

China Rushes to Rescue Trapped Survivors

By Andreas Lorenz in Dujiangyan, China

Fear and desperation are the order of the day in Dujiangyan, a city in China's Sichuan province left almost completely destroyed by Monday's catastrophic earthquake. Rescuers are trying to find survivers in the rubble with their bare hands. But all too often, they are losing the race against time.

A father waits at the entrance to the Xianghe Elementary School. Soldiers stand in his way, not allowing him to get any closer to the building. A blue bus belonging to the police Special Forces has just driven past.

Behind the doors children are dying, right this minute, this very second -- and his own daughter could be one of them. The man is crying. He seems helpless beneath his umbrella.

Almost 28 hours have passed since the earth shook so strongly that the school collapsed like a house of cards, burying more then 400 children. He hasn’t seen his daughter since.

Ambulances arrive at the school grounds with sirens blaring. They are signs of hope because they take away the living, not the dead.

A crane and soldiers in ponchos are visible through the gate. Doctors and nurses are gathered on the opposite side of the street. "We saved nine children today, dozens yesterday," says one. "All the children are being brought immediately to the hospital in the provincial capital of Chengdu."

It is lashing rain in Dujiangyan, 100 kilometers (62 miles) from the epicenter of the earthquake that shook the heavily populated Sichuan province on Monday. It is estimated that at least 12,000 people have already died. That figure is rising by the hour because thousands, if not tens of thousands, are still trapped beneath the rubble.

Sirens scream through the streets of Dujiangyan. Military columns, trucks and bulldozers roll through the city. Some houses are totally destroyed, others are badly damaged: they have deep cracks, their roofs have fallen in, whole floors are missing.

The streets are full of people, many suddenly homeless. The blue tents of disaster relief workers are only seen in a few neighbourhoods.

Others try to flee in buses. But most take shelter under umbrellas and plastic tarps that they've unfurled in parks, courtyards and on sidewalks. A few have built a little fort out of rickshaws. White smoke rises from fires where people are cooking in the open.

The highway to Dujiangyan is closed to normal traffic. Only aid workers and journalists are allowed through. Arriving in the stricken city, you don't notice the damage immediately. But the long lines of migrant workers carrying bags and suitcases out of the city are a signal that there's not much more to be done here.

Li Yuheng, 7, and Liu Like, 10, are slurping rice soup under an umbrella. Both girls went to the Xianghe Elementary School, one in first grade and the other in fourth. When the earth began to shake, they were in the school's yard and escaped unscathed. Across from their camp on Ying Bing Street, a five-story building has collapsed. On the sidewalk nearby, a corpse covered with towels lies on a wooden door with a golden knob. Passersby walk around it or step over.

Around 25 soldiers wearing green ponchos and a few civilians are hectically shovelling stones out of the way, and a yellow crane is pulling cement slabs and heavy stones from the rubble heap. Another old woman is buried in the rubble, but there may be two or three other women -- nobody knows for sure. "Where was the old one?" the helpers ask. "We think on the stairs," her family says.

Suddenly the men in uniform climb down from the rubble -- they've suspended their search, saying there is no chance of that anyone survived in the building.

But then one of them hollers, "I heard something. Sounds. Sounds." The soldiers immediately start sifting through the rubble again. They remove stone after stone until they come across a purse, a small teddy bear and a round glass slab.

The rescue workers are poorly equipped. Some aren't even wearing gloves. They lack the crowbars and hydraulic jacks needed to move heavy rubble as well as sound detecting devices. Nor can any search and rescue dogs be found.

Then the agonizing wait begins. The crane driver turns the motor off to keep from drowning out possible cries for help. Everyone is listening closely for signs of life. Then they are joined by a doctor, a nurse in a pink uniform and a traffic cop.

But they can't hear anything. The soldiers disappear in the rain. The search is over.

Still, the family doesn't want to give up. The daughter, a woman in a pink anorak, shouts into a dark chasm covered by a cement slab. "Mama" she calls out. "Mama."

After the ambulance drives away, a man appears on a bicycle. He's handing out rice to bystanders. He doesn't ask for any money.