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Toiling through the night in a quake-devastated city (editorial)

Desperate efforts have been mounted in Mianzhu as rescuers still have some hope of reaching survivors. The roads were black and eerily quiet for a city of such size. But on a street near the centre, floodlights and the grind of cutting equipment announced that rescue workers were toiling through the night. It had been a commercial bank, said one bystander; a Bank of China, said someone else. You couldn't tell any more. All that was left was a great mound where the building had slid forward into the road as if it were melting butter.