Rescuers aid China quake victims
Rescuers and relief teams struggled to rush supplies into the rural hills of China’s Sichuan province after an earthquake left at least 179 people dead and more than 6,700 injured.
Frightened survivors spent a night in cars, tents and makeshift shelters.
The earthquake yesterday morning triggered landslides that cut off roads and disrupted phone and power connections in mountainous Lushan county, on the same fault line where a devastating quake wreaked widespread damage five years ago.
Hardest hit yesterday were villages further up the valleys, where farmers grow rice, vegetables and corn on terraced plots.
Rescuers hiked into neighbouring Baoxing county after its roads were cut off, reaching it overnight.
In Longmen village, the authorities said nearly all the buildings had been destroyed.
Along the main roads, ambulances, fire engines and military trucks piled high with supplies waited in long queues, some turning back to try other routes when roads were impassable.
Rescuers were forced to dynamite boulders that had fallen across roads, and heavy rain slowed rescue work.
Chinese Premier Li Keqiang arrived yesterday by helicopter in Ya’an to direct rescue efforts.
“The current priority is to save lives,” he said, after visiting hospitals, tents and climbing on a pile of rubble to view the devastation.
The government’s official Xinhua News Agency said at least 179 people had died, and more than 6,700 were injured.
The quake – measured by the earthquake administration at magnitude-7.0 – struck shortly after 8am local time on Saturday, when many people were at home, sleeping or having breakfast.
As in most natural disasters, the government mobilised thousands of soldiers and others, sending excavators and other heavy machinery as well as tents, blankets and other emergency supplies.
Two soldiers died after their vehicle slid off a road and rolled down a cliff.
The Chinese Red Cross said it had deployed relief teams with supplies of food, water, medicine and rescue equipment to the disaster areas.
Lushan, where the quake struck, lies where the fertile Sichuan plain meets foothills that rise to the Tibetan plateau and sits on the Longmenshan fault.
It was along the same fault line that a devastating magnitude-7.9 quake struck in May 2008, leaving more than 90,000 people dead or missing and presumed dead in one of the worst natural disasters to strike China in recent decades.
The well-known Bifengxia panda preserve, which is near Lushan, was not affected by the quake.
Dozens of pandas were moved to Bifengxia from another preserve, Wolong, after its habitat was wrecked by the 2008 quake.
