9,000 die in big china quake

  • 13/05/2008

  • Asian Age (New Delhi)

A massive earthquake toppled buildings across a wide area of central China on Monday, killing more than 9,000 people, trapping hundreds of students under the rubble of schools and causing a toxic chemical leak in one of the worst quakes in decades. The 7.8-magnitude earthquake devastated a region of small cities and towns set amid steep hills northeast of Sichuan's provincial capital of Chengdu. The official Xinhua news agency reported 8,533 people died in Sichuan alone and dozens of others in surrounding areas. [The Indian embassy in Beijing said that according to the information available so far, no Indians were affected by the earthquake, PTI reported from the Chinese capital. "No problem (has been reported) so far, as far as Indians are concerned," it quoted embassy sources as saying. Indian diplomats said they had checked with their contacts in Chengdu and elsewhere.] In Beichuan county, just east of the epicentre, 80 per cent of the buildings had collapsed and some 10,000 people were injured aside from 3,000 to 5,000 dead, Xinhua said. It and other state media said a chemical plant in Shifang city cratered, burying hundreds of people and spilling more than 80 tons of toxic liquid ammonia from the site. In Juyuan town in Dujiangyan city, just south of the epicentre, the middle school collapsed, burying the students and immediately killing four ninth graders, Xinhua reported. Xinhua said its reporters in Juyuan town saw buried teenagers struggling to break free from the rubble "while others were crying out for help." Photos posted on the Internet and found on the Chinese search engine Baidu showed arms and a torso sticking out of the rubble of the school as dozens of people worked to free them, using small mechanical winches or their hands to move concrete slabs. Xinhua said 50 bodies had been pulled from the debris but did not say if they were alive. The quake struck shortly before 2.30 pm - when classrooms and office towers were full - and was centred on Wenchuan county, 92 km northwest of Chengdu. The quake emptied office buildings could be felt as far away as Vietnam; crashed telephone networks; and hours later, left parts of Chengdu, a city of 10 million, in darkness. The road to Wenchuan from Chengdu was cut off by landslides, state media said, slowing the rescue efforts. A photo from Wenchuan posted on the Internet showed what appeared to have been a six-storey building flattened, ripped away from taller buildings of grey concrete. Xinhua reported students were also buried under five other toppled schools in Deyang city. The Communist leadership said late on Monday that "thousands" had died, and that besides those in Sichuan, the quake had caused deaths in three other provinces and the mega-city of Chongqing. Beijing mobilised nearly 8,000 soldiers and police to provide rescue in Sichuan and put the province on the second-highest level of emergency footing. Chinese Prime Minister Wen Jiabao, a geologist by training, called the quake "a major geological disaster" and flew into Chengdu to oversee the rescue and relief operations. The quake was the deadliest since 1976 and posed a challenge to a government already grappling with discontent over high inflation and a widespread uprising among Tibetans in western China while trying to prepare for the Beijing Olympics this August. Stock markets in Shanghai and Shenzhen seesawed on Monday, dropping on inflation worries and then rising and tapering off over worries about the quake's economic impact to post slight gains. The epicentre lies on a fault where South Asia pushes against the Eurasian land mass, smashing the Sichuan plain into mountains leading to the Tibetan highlands, near communities that rose up in sometimes violent protests against Chinese rule in mid-March. Much of the area has been closed to foreign media and travellers since, compounding the difficulties of getting information from the region. Chengdu's airport closed, reopening seven hours later for outbound flights only, and a major railway line to the northeast was ruptured. For much of the day, electric power and telephone networks into Chengdu and other affected areas were down, and panicked residents overloaded parts of the remaining telephone system with calls. Residents fled into the streets and described an eerie feeling as people stayed outside into the night, fearing another quake. State media citing the Sichuan seismology bureau reported 313 aftershocks. Although it was difficult to telephone Chengdu, an Israeli student, Ronen Medzini, sent a text message to AP saying that there were power and water outages there. "Traffic jams, no running water, power outs, everyone sitting in the streets, patients evacuated from hospitals sitting outside and waiting," Medzini said. A reporter from a US public radio network, National Public Radio, said the earthquake hit at around 2.30 pm and lasted about three minutes total. "I was in a building, everybody raced outside when we felt it. The building started to shake, there was a huge rumble, and everybody ran," said NPR reporter Melissa Block in comments aired by the network.