Just a matter of seconds, says teacher
The last child was out. She was alive. There were 16 young survivors. No more than that. Rescuers sighed, partly sad, partly relieved, as they stood on the debris of the Yinghua Middle School amid the half-light of early Thursday after 60 hours of toil. On the suddenly silent school campus, the heartbroken cry of a father went up, "There are no more! [My child] was not found!" The small town of Yinghua, surrounded by high mountains, is 20 km from Wenchuan County in southwesten Sichuan Province, the epicentre of the 7.9-magnitude earthquake that has claimed about 15,000 lives.