Hu says quake relief government’s top priority

BEIJING—Chinese leader Hu Jintao urged governments at all levels to regard earthquake rescue and relief as the top priority at a high profile meeting late Monday evening.
Hu, state President and General Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China (CPC), presided over the meeting of the Political Bureau Standing Committee of the Central Committee of the CPC. The meeting called on the army, armed police and paramilitary forces, as well as medical personnel to go to the quake-hit areas as soon as possible, and mount all-out efforts to save the injured and reduce the impact caused by the havoc.
Monday’s quake measuring 7.8 on the Richter scale jolted Wenchuan County, Sichuan Province in southwest China at 2:28 p.m., resulting in nearly 9,000 deaths reported so far. Tremors were also reported in over half of China’s provinces and municipalities, according to the China Seismological Bureau.
The meeting demanded sufficient supply of food, medicine, clothes and tents to the quake-hit areas and that telecommunication, power and water supplies and transportation access must be restored as soon as possible.
Local governments should keep a close watch on the latest development of the earthquake and its aftershocks, and guard against earthquake-induced disasters causing new casualties.
Those who spread rumors to sabotage disaster relief work would be dealt with according to China’s laws and regulations.
The meeting decided to set up a disaster relief headquarters with Premier Wen Jiabao as head, and Li Keqiang and Hui Liangyu, both vice premiers, as deputy heads.
The meeting called on all party members in the quake-hit areas to devote themselves to protect the interests of the public on the front line of disaster relief work.
Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao has pledged to save as many lives as the rescue teams can in southwest China’s Sichuan Province which was hit by a major quake on Monday afternoon.
Wen made the remarks during his inspections at a hospital and a school in Dujiangyan, a city northwest of the provincial capital Chengdu, partly damaged by the quake measuring 7.8 on the Richter scale.
The road from Dujiangyan to Wenchuan, epicenter of the quake, was blocked by rock and mud slides, holding up rescue, medical and other disaster relief teams in the city.
“Please just hold on, people are going to get you out of there!” the Premier told the people trapped in the collapsed buildings of the hospital in a loudspeaker.
When comforting patients and medical staffs in the hospital, Wen asked rescuing troops to search every corner for people waiting for salvation and carry out the rescue work in an orderly way.
“If there is a gleam of hope, we will do all the best to save the people,” the Premier vowed at a middle school of Juyuan town, adding that the rescuing team would not rest until the last one under the ruin was saved.
“The medical experts are coming, the rescuing planes will land soon,” Wen told people crying for help in the school, “I was told many trapped people have hopes to survive from the disaster.”
He made a three-time bow to pay his respect to the bodies of the people killed by the quake laid on the school’s square, saying that he was very depressed.
Premier Wen told officials at the temporary headquarters for disaster relief in Dujiangyan that roads to Wenchuan should be recovered as soon as possible at all costs.
“The road is the key for the relief work since we can only know the situation there when we can send people and we can only transport the injured out when the road is clean,” Wen said.—Agencies