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. When the quake rocked the town, about 300 students were in the class inside the five-floor school building. "It was just a matter of seconds. I ran to the ground and turned back. The school building caved in,' said Dai Dongli, school's English teacher, who was standing in the hallway when the building shook. Nine hours after the dreadful tremors, people saw the light of the first group of rescue vehicles. No one had an idea of how many were buried under the shattered building and how many alive when some 300 Armed Police officers arrived at the site. "I heard clear voices from the ruins when I first reached the site. They were calling for help,' recalled Cheng Yuejin, the chief command of the rescue team. It was a very difficult and delicate task. Machines can only be used to move big concrete frames and the hardest work had to be done by hands. The last one was the toughest one. Rescuers spent 35 hours to get the 15-year-old girl Liao Youyao out. She was buried deep in the second floor of the building. She could move her hands and body but her legs were trapped under the rubble, rescuers recalled. Rescuers hung upside down from the crevice and knocked concrete blocks from around her by hammer and electric drill.