Chinese Premier Spurs on Quake Rescue

Tibetan monks help digging to search students believe to be
trapped at a school collapsed after an earthquake in
Yushu County, northwest China's Qinghai Province, 16 Apr 2010

Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao has visited the earthquake disaster zone in remote western China and promised to rebuild the devastated region. The death toll has risen to nearly 800 and the fight is now on to provide food, shelter and medical aid to the survivors.

On his trip to the quake area, Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao told survivors and rescuers the central government would make an all-out effort to rebuild devastated communities.

After he was helped over the rubble of collapsed buildings in Yushu County, Mr. Wen addressed scores of survivors and rescuers, with aides translating his words into Tibetan. Mr. Wen says the survivors' pain and crisis is also the country's. He says the country is grieving with the people, most of whom are Tibetan.

Wen says the rescue effort will be expanded and that the government will not give up hope of finding more people alive. Nearly 300 are missing and more than 11,000 were injured in Wednesday's earthquake.

Two days after the 6.9 quake struck the Tibetan mountain area in Qingahi Province, rescuers and area residents continued to scour wrecked buildings, listening for those trapped. Monks can be seen working along side soldiers. Rescue workers fear freezing nighttime temperatures may add to the final death count.

Death Toll From Chinese Earthquake Rises to 760

Emergency workers in western China are struggling against freezing cold and altitude sickness in the search for more survivors of this week's powerful earthquake that killed at least 760 people and left thousands homeless

Using their bare hands and shovels, rescuers continued Thursday to claw through the rubble of buildings that collapsed in a powerful earthquake in Qinghai Province.

The death toll is expected to rise with hundreds more still believed to buried under collapsed mud and wood structures. The quake, which struck the mainly Tibetan region early Wednesday, is the deadliest in China in almost two years.

Photographs of the victims are emerging and they show many school children among the dead.

State media reports say 66 pupils and 10 teachers have been killed and dozens of grieving parents are waiting for news near ruined schools.

Thousands of people spent the night out in the open wrapped in blankets against the below freezing temperatures.

Zou Ming is the Ministry of Civil Affairs' disaster relief head. He says medical aid, food and shelter are the top priority for the 100,000 people living in the quake zone.

Zou says a huge relief effort to send tents and medical equipment is under way.

He says soldiers and medical teams have been dispatched.

Doctors who have reached the worst affected areas in Yushu County - where 85 percent of buildings have been destroyed - have rigged makeshift hospitals.

But they say the region's high altitude hampers rescue and aid workers. At high altitudes, there is less oxygen in the air, and people from lower regions often have problems coping.

Chinese Prime Minister Wen Jiabao is to visit the area late Thursday. He and President Hu Jintao have called for an all-out rescue effort to reach the disaster zone on the Tibetan plateau known as the "Roof of the World".

The United States said it is "ready to assist" if China requests international aid.

The exiled Tibetan spiritual leader the Dalai Lama offered prayers for those who died while Pope Benedict called for "solidarity" with the victims.

The 6.9 quake and a score of aftershocks were centered in the mountains that divide Qinghai province from the Tibet Autonomous Region.

Some of the scenes are a reminiscent of those seen after the May 2008 earthquake that claimed more than 70,000 lives in neighboring Sichuan Province. Among the victims were thousands of school children killed when their schools crumbled in the quake.

Accusations that the schools were poorly built are still a source of controversy in China.

China sifts rubble for quake survivors in Qinghai

China has been sifting rubble for survivors of the deadly quake which hit the remote Qinghai region as thousands spent a freezing night in the open.

Rescuers used bare hands and picks to search debris as night fell, with little heavy lifting equipment in the mountainous, mainly Tibetan area.

Officials say 589 people died and 10,000 were injured when the quake struck Yushu county early on Wednesday.

But the death toll is expected to rise and further aftershocks are feared.

Relief flights carrying medical workers and supplies have been landing in Yushu airport but the road to the town of 70,000 people has been blocked by a landslide, the Associated Press news agency reports from Qinghai's provincial capital, Xining.

The BBC's Chris Hogg, in Qinghai and travelling by road to the disaster area, passed long columns of military vehicles carrying diggers and other heavy lifting equipment as dawn was breaking on Thursday.

The columns, which included ambulances, were about eight or nine hours from the disaster zone, he said.

In the township of Jiegu, 85% of buildings were destroyed, officials say, and state TV has been showing street after street reduced to rubble.

Several schools collapsed and at least 56 students are known to have died, 22 of them in a school in Yushu.

Chinese President Hu Jintao has called for an all-out effort to save as many people as possible and some 5,000 rescuers, including 700 soldiers, have been sent to the disaster area.

The civil affairs ministry said it was to send 5,000 tents, 50,000 coats and 50,000 quilts as local officials in Yushu reported a lack of tents, medicines and medical equipment.

China has received messages of sympathy and offers of aid from foreign states including Japan, Russia and France.

'So much dust'

About 900 people have been pulled alive from under the rubble since the quake struck at 0749 on Wednesday (2349 GMT Tuesday), at the shallow depth of 10km (six miles), Chinese media say.

But Wu Yong, a local army commander, said the death toll could rise "as lots of houses collapsed".

Rescue operations were being hampered by the fact that the magnitude 6.9 quake disrupted telecommunications, knocked out electricity and triggered landslides.

In Xining, some 860km (530 miles) from the quake zone, soldiers, fire-fighters and rescue workers with sniffer dogs thronged the airport, which closed to civilian flights for several hours to make way for relief planes.

Efforts are being slowed down by the lack of jet fuel stored at Yushu airport. Relief planes are having to carry extra fuel, limiting their space for supplies.

As local officials struggled to find accommodation for the thousands of people left homeless, weather forecasters were predicting wind and sleet in the coming days, putting victims at risk of exposure.

Luo Song, a monk from a monastery in Yushu county, said his sister who worked at an orphanage there had told him three children were sent to a hospital but the facilities lacked equipment.

"She said the hospitals are facing a lot of difficulty right now because there are no doctors, they have only bandages, they can't give injections, they can't put people on intravenous drips," he told AP by phone from the southern Chinese city of Shenzhen.

In Jiegu, hotel manager Ren Yu said that nearly all of the local mud and wood houses had collapsed.

"There was so much dust in the air, we couldn't see anything," he said.

"There was a lot of panic. People were crying on the streets. Some of our staff, who were reunited with their parents, were also in tears."

Harrowing photographs have emerged of emergency workers removing dust-covered dead infants from rubble.

The high-altitude region is prone to earthquakes but, according to the US Geological Survey, this was the strongest tremor within 100km of the area since 1976.

In 2008, a huge quake struck neighbouring Sichuan province, about 800km from Yushu. That left 87,000 people dead or missing and five million homeless.

Terrible earthquake’ kills hundreds in China

BEIJING - A series of strong earthquakes struck a far western Tibetan area of China on Wednesday, killing at least 400 people and injuring thousands as houses made of mud and wood collapsed, trapping many more, officials said.

State television channel, CCTV, quoted an emergency official, Pubucairen, as saying that the number of injured was believed to be more than 10,000.

The main temblor of magnitude-6.9 struck in southern Qinghai province, near Tibet, on Wednesday morning, the U.S. Geological Survey said. The USGS recorded six temblors in less than three hours, all but one registered 5.0 or higher.

The official Xinhua News Agency reported that a number of school buildings had collapsed, citing witness reports that some students had been killed and others were trapped in the rubble.

Workers were racing to release water from a reservoir in the disaster area where a crack had formed after the quake to prevent a flood, according to the China Earthquake Administration.

The quake was centered on Yushu county, a Tibetan area in Qinghai's south, with a population of about 100,000, mostly herders and farmers.

The main quake sent residents fleeing as it toppled houses made of mud and wood, said Karsum Nyima, the Yushu county television station's deputy head of news, speaking by phone with broadcaster CCTV.

In a flash, the houses went down. It was a terrible earthquake," he said. "In a small park, there is a Buddhist pagoda and the top of the pagoda fell off. ... Everybody is out on the streets, standing in front of their houses, trying to find their family members."

The earthquake comes a little less than two years after a magnitude-7.9 quake in neighboring Sichuan province left almost 90,000 people dead or missing. That quake flattened several schools, killing thousands of students. Poor design, shoddy construction and the lax enforcement of building codes were found to be rampant, causing public anger.

Students dead, others trapped
Xinhua reported that the early morning quake had caused some schools and part of a government office building to cave in.

Zhu Liang, a driver at the Yushu prefecture government, told Xinhua that half of the Yushu Vocational School's buildings had collapsed.

"I do not know how many students have died," Zhu, who is now in the rescue operation, told the news service. "Students just got up and were yet to go to class when the quake happened. I recovered several bodies from the debris and found they were fully dressed."

"Buildings in our school were all toppled, and five pupils have died," said a teacher surnamed Chang at the Yushu Primary School, a boarding school with about 1,000 students. "Morning sessions did not begin when the quake happened. Some pupils ran out of dorms alive, and those who had not escaped in time were buried."

Xinhua added that residents said most students had been able to flee to playgrounds.

"Most of the schools in Yushu were built fairly recently and should have been able to withstand the earthquake," said Wang Liling, a volunteer worker for Gesanghua, a Chinese charity that helps school children in Qinghai.

Her group, she said, had heard that a vocational school collapsed in Yushu. "Many homes have been damaged, but we'll have to wait until this evening, when our staff arrive there, to understand anything specific."

Samdrup Gyatso, 17, who ran a shop in his two-story house in Gyegu, told Xinhua: "There are 10 people in my family and only four of us escaped. One of my relatives died. All the others are buried under the rubble."

'Thronged with panic'
In Jiegu, a township near the epicenter, more than 85 percent of houses had collapsed, while large cracks have appeared on buildings still standing, Xinhua cited Zhuohuaxia, a local publicity official, as saying.

"The streets in Jiegu are thronged with panic and full of injured people, with many of them bleeding from their injuries," he told Xinhua. "Many students are buried under the debris due to building collapse at a vocational school."

"A large crack appears in the wall of the Yushu Hotel, and part of a government office building also collapsed," he added. "I can see injured people everywhere. The biggest problem now is that we lack tents, we lack medical equipment, medicine and medical workers."

State television Wednesday showed footage of paramilitary police using shovels to dig around a house with a collapsed wooden roof.

A local military official, Shi Huajie, told CCTV that rescuers were working with limited equipment.

"The difficulty we face is that we don't have any excavators. Many of the people have been buried and our soldiers are trying to pull them out with human labor," Shi said.

"It is very difficult to save people with our bare hands."

Officials said excavators were not available and, with most of the roads leading to the nearest airport damaged, equipment and rescuers would have a hard time reaching the area.

Downed phone lines, strong winds and frequent aftershocks were also hindering rescue efforts, said Wu Yong, a local military chief.

People from the Yushu prefecture highway department were frantically trying to dig out colleagues trapped in a collapsed building, department official Ji Guodong said by telephone.

"The homes are built with thick walls and are strong, but if they collapsed they could hurt many people inside," Zhuo De told Reuters by phone from the capital of Qinghai province after contacting his family in Yushu.

Five thousand tents and 100,000 thick, cotton coats and heavy blankets were being sent to help survivors cope with strong winds and near-freezing temperatures of around 43 degrees Fahrenheit, the Qinghai provincial government said in a statement.

The epicenter of the first quake was located 235 miles south-southeast of Golmud, a large city in Qinghai, at a depth of six miles, the USGS said.

Ten minutes later, the area was hit by a magnitude 5.3 quake, which was followed after two minutes by a temblor measuring 5.2, according to the U.S. agency. Both the subsequent earthquakes were measured at a depth of 6 miles. Another quake, measuring 5.8, was recorded at 9:25 a.m.

Xinhua cited officials at the China Earthquake Networks Center as saying at least 18 aftershocks have been reported and that more temblors exceeding magnitude 6 were likely to occur in the coming days.