http://www.cnn.com/2008/WORLD/asiapcf/05/12/china.quake/index.html
Nearly 10,000 re****ted killed by China quake
* Story Highlights
* NEW: China says at least 10,000 dead but it expects figure to
rise
* Relief troops trudge through destruction in hopes of reaching
worst-hit area
* Nearly 900 children buried when a school building collapses, 50
bodies found
* 7.9 magnitude quake is felt throughout much of China
* Next Article in World »
* Read
* VIDEO
* PHOTOS
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* EXPLAINER
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BEIJING, China (CNN) -- Relief troops walked hours over rock, debris
and mud in hopes of reaching the worst-hit area of an earthquake that
rocked central China on Monday, killing nearly 10,000 people,
state-run media re****ted.
art.babies.ap.jpg
Newly born babiesare moved at a hospital in Nanchong, China, in this
photo from Xinhua.
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1 of 3
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Setting out from Maerkang in Sichuan Province at 8 p.m. Monday, the
100 or so troops had to travel 200 kilometers (124 miles) to go before
reaching Wenchuan, the epicenter of the quake, also in the province,
Xinhua re****ted. After seven hours, they still had 70 kilometers (43
miles) to go.
"I have seen many collapsed civilian houses, and the rocks dropped
from mountains on the roadside are everywhere," the head of the unit,
Li Zaiyuan, told Xinhua.
Added CNN Correspondent John Vause: "The roads here are terrible in
the best of times ... right now they're down right atrocious. They've
resorted to going in one man at a time on foot."
Nearly all the confirmed deaths were in Sichuan Province, but rescuers
were hindered because roads linking it to the provincial capital,
Chengdu, were damaged, Xinhua re****ted.
Local radio quoted disaster relief officials as saying a third of the
buildings in Wenchuan collapsed from the quake and another third were
seriously damaged.
The earthquake was powerful enough to be felt throughout most of
China. Many children were buried under the rubble of their schools.
The Chinese government said the death toll was sure to rise.
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An expert told CNN the 7.9-magnitude quake at about 2:45 p.m. Monday
was the largest the region has seen "for over a generation."
Residents as far as Chongqing -- about 200 miles from the epicenter in
Sichuan Province -- spent the night outdoors, too afraid of
aftershocks to sleep indoors.
Local radio in Sichuan quoted disaster relief officials as saying a
third of the buildings in Wenchuan collapsed from the quake and
another third were seriously damaged. Video Watch as the death toll
rises »
The state-run Zhongxin news agency re****ted that a survivor who
escaped Beichuan county in Sichuan Province described the province as
having been "razed to the ground."
The Red Cross Society of China, coordinating some of the international
aid efforts, encouraged financial donations because of the difficulty
of getting supplies to those most in need.
At least six schools collapsed to some extent in the quake or
aftershocks that followed, Xinhua re****ted. Video See a re****t on
rescue operations at the school »
At one school, almost 900 students -- all eighth-graders and
ninth-graders, according to a local villager -- were believed to be
buried. Video See workers in Chengdu hiding under their desks during
the quake »
At least 50 bodies were pulled from the rubble by Monday night at
Juyuan Middle School in Juyuan Town****p of Dujiangyan City, Sichuan
Province, Xinhua re****ted.
"Some buried teenagers were struggling to free themselves from the
ruins while others were calling for help. Eight excavators were
working at the site. Devastated parents watched as five cranes worked
at the site and an ambulance waited," Xinhua re****ted.
"A tearful mother said her son, ninth-grader Zhang Chengwei, was
buried in the ruins."
Meanwhile, 2,300 people were buried in two collapsed chemical plants
in Sichuan's ****fang city, and 80 tons of ammonia leaked out, Xinhua
re****ted. Six hundred people died there. The plants were among a
series of buildings that collapsed, including private homes, schools
and factories.
The local government has evacuated 6,000 civilians from the area and
was dispatching firefighters to help at the scene, Xinhua re****ted.
Much of the nation's trans****tation system shut down. Xinhua re****ted
there were "multiple landslides and collapses along railway lines"
near Chengdu. Video Quake victims have been sleeping outside in
Chengdu »
Sichuan Province sits in the Sichuan basin and is surrounded by the
Himalayas to the west. The Yangtze River flows through the province
and the Three Gorges Dam in the nearby Hubei Province controls
flooding to the Sichuan -- though there were no re****ts of damage to
the world's largest dam.
Monday's quake was caused by the Tibetan plateau colliding with the
Sichuan basin, Zhigang Peng, an earthquake expert at Georgia Institute
of Technology in Atlanta, Georgia, told CNN.
"Earthquakes in this part of China are infrequent but not uncommon,"
he said.
The last major earthquake in the region occurred in the northwestern
margin of the Sichuan basin when a 7.5-magnitude quake killed more
than 9,300 people on August 25, 1933.
President Hu Jintao ordered an all-out effort to help those affected,
and Premier Wen Jiabao traveled to the region to direct the rescue
work, Xinhua re****ted.
"My fellow Chinese, facing such a severe disaster, we need calm,
confidence, courage and efficient organization," Wen was quoted as
saying.
"I believe we can certainly overcome the disaster with the public and
the military working together under the leader****p of the CPC Central
Committee and the government."
Peter Sammonds, professor of geophysics at University College London,
called the earthquake "tremendous."
"Particularly in the more remote, the more mountainous part where this
has taken place, a lot of the buildings are built on sediments that
are quite unstable. They're probably liquifying, causing the buildings
to collapse. You might expect landslides to occur, which could
actually stop the relief efforts going through on the roads, so this
could be very grim in the remoter, more mountainous parts of this
province."
While many of the most immediate efforts were focused on Sichuan
Province, Xinhua also re****ted dead and injured in Gansu, Chongqing
and Yunnan provinces.
A provincial government spokesman said they feared more dead and
injured in collapsed houses in Dujiangyan City in Wenchuan County.
A driver for the seismological bureau said he saw "rows of houses
collapsed" in Dujiangyan, Xinhua re****ted.
Bonnie Thie, the country director of the Peace Corps, told CNN she was
on a university campus in Chengdu about 60 miles from the epicenter,
in the eastern part of China's Sichuan province, when the first quake
hit.
"You could see the ground shaking," Thie told CNN.
The shaking "went on for what seemed like a very long time," she said.
Bruce Presgrave, a geophysicist with the U.S. Geological Survey, said
this quake could cause major damage because of its strength and
proximity to major population centers. Also, it was relatively
shallow, and those kinds of quakes tend to do more damage near the
epicenter than deeper ones, Presgrave said.
An earthquake with 7.5 magnitude in the northern Chinese city of
Tangshan killed 255,000 people in 1976 -- the greatest death toll from
an earthquake in the last four centuries and the second greatest in
recorded history, according to the U.S. Geological Survey. Tangshan is
roughly 995 miles (1,600 km) from Chengdu, the nearest major city to
the epicenter of Monday's quake. Read an explanation about earthquakes
»
After the quake struck Monday, the ground shook as far away as
Beijing, which is 950 miles (1,528 km) from the epicenter. Residents
of the Chinese capital, which hosts this year's Olympic Games in
August, felt a quiet, rolling sensation for about a minute. Video See
CNN's interview with an American in Chengdu »
Thousands of people were evacuated from Beijing buildings immediately
after the earthquake.
At least seven more earthquakes -- measuring between 4.0 and 6.0
magnitudes -- happened nearby over the four hours after the initial
quake at at 2:28 p.m. local time, the USGS re****ted.
A spokesman for the Beijing Olympic Committee said no Olympic venues
were affected. The huge Three Gorges Dam -- roughly 400 miles east of
the epicenter -- was not damaged, a spokesman said.
The earthquake was also felt in Hong Kong, Shanghai, Taiwan, and as
far away as Hanoi, Vietnam, and Bangkok, Thailand, according to the
Hong Kong-based Mandarin-language channel Phoenix TV.
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