|
Rescuers Comb Rubble for China Quake Survivors
Tue February 25, 2003 12:08 AM ET
By Jonathan Ansfield
URUMQI, China (Reuters) - Rescue workers with search
dogs combed through rubble in flattened villages in
northwest China Tuesday in hopes of finding survivors
of an earthquake that killed at least 261 people.
Monday's quake, measuring 6.8 on the Richter scale and
the deadliest to hit the Xinjiang region since the
Communists took power in 1949, also injured 4,000
people, said officials in Bachu county, the worst hit
area about 620 miles from the regional capital, Urumqi.
Bachu officials told Reuters that at least 261 people
had been killed and more than 2,000 seriously injured
were taken to hospitals in neighboring counties and
Kashgar, the fabled Silk Road oasis.
The Urumqi Evening News reported 50,000 were left
homeless or otherwise affected by the disaster, and
8,861 homes and 900 school classrooms had been leveled.
As aftershocks unnerved survivors, rescue workers
worked around the clock in freezing temperatures. They
sifted through rubble with bare hands, spades and
pickaxes while crews used motion detectors and dogs to
search for survivors, officials told Reuters.
"They haven't had any sleep," said one Bachu county
government official. "The hands of some People's
Liberation Army soldiers were bleeding from digging."
More than 5,000 soldiers, militia and police had
joined the rescue effort, the officials said.
MAO, MARX LONELY
Photos issued by state media showed schools and homes
had been turned to piles of bricks and debris. In one,
only one wall of a classroom remained standing.
Its lonely blackboard and portraits of late Communist
Party chairman Mao Zedong and Karl Marx, who founded
communism in the 19th century, stared out over a sea
of rubble.
Villagers piled floral quilts in the streets for the
thousands left homeless. Many whose homes survived
stayed outside, fearing another aftershock could bring
the roof down on top of them, witnesses said.
A town square became a makeshift medical clinic where
the injured received treatment, some with intravenous
drips, one photo in the Urumqi newspaper showed.
Others spent the night in makeshift tents, close to a
bonfire or bundled in quilts or plastic sheets against
the cold, well away from wobbly structures.
Injured wrapped in blankets were helped on to beds of
pickup trucks for transport to hospital.
The more seriously injured were being treated in
overflowing hospitals in neighboring counties and
Kashgar after the quake rocked the dry desert region
bordering Central Asian states at 10:03 a.m. (0203 GMT)
Monday.
Grain, milk and relief goods were shipped to the five
hardest-hit villages and townships in Bachu, officials
said.
The Ministry of Civil Affairs sent 6,000 tents for
those left homeless, the Beijing Youth Daily said. The
Red Cross in Xinjiang sent 2,000 quilts and 1,000
coats, the newspaper said.
ORDERS FROM ABOVE
Vice Premier Wen Jiabao issued an order overnight that
relief goods must reach victims within 24 hours, the
China Daily said.
"Providing food, drinking water, clothing, shelter and
medical attention are top priorities," Xinhua said,
quoting a directive from Wen and other Chinese leaders.
"We must ensure victims do not suffer from hunger and
cold, and prevent the spread of disease," said Wen,
tipped to become premier at an annual parliamentary
session in March.
The county government official said food, blankets and
other relief supplies had arrived and added many
residents had moved into tents overnight.
A rescue worker told Reuters the government in Kashgar
had ordered bakeries to bake 80,000 loaves of nang, or
traditional Uighur flat bread, for earthquake victims.
Families held funerals for victims in the
predominantly Muslim region, many of them members of
the Uighur ethnic group, following a tradition of
burying people on the same day of death.
In Qiongkuer Qiake village alone, 22 primary and
secondary school students were killed and 40 injured,
a local education official said.
"The death toll would have been much higher had the
students not been attending a flag-raising ceremony,"
the official said.
More than 11,000 farm animals were killed as barns and
stalls collapsed, state media said.
Several aftershocks rocked the area Tuesday. The
strongest measured 5.5 on the Richter scale and was
recorded at 11:52 a.m. (10:52 p.m. EST Monday), a
seismological official said.
Earthquakes are common in China, regularly shaking the
vast and sparsely populated Tibetan plateau including
Xinjiang, Qinghai province and Tibet, but few have
been so deadly.
An earthquake in January 1997 killed 50 in Xinjiang.
Nine people were killed in a quake there in April that
year.
A quake measuring 7.9 on the Richter scale devastated
Tangshan, near China's capital Beijing, on July 27,
1976, killing an estimated 250,000 people. (With
additional reporting by Judy Hua and Niu Shuping)
|
