Over 18,000 buried by quake in Chinese town
Foreign Desk Report

BEIJING—China said on Tuesday 18,645 people were buried under debris in the city of Mianyang, neighbouring Wenchuan county, the epicentre of Monday’s devastating earthquake. Some 3,629 people had been confirmed dead.
The death toll from China’s most devastating earthquake in three decades has jumped to more than 12,000, a top disaster relief official said on Tuesday, as storms hampered rescuers in the most devastated areas.
The toll of the dead and missing soared as rescue workers dug through flattened schools and homes on Tuesday in a desperate attempt to find survivors of China’s worst earthquake in three decades. The official Xinhua News Agency said the death toll exceeded 12,000 in Sichuan province alone, and 18,645 were still buried in debris in the city of Mianyang, near the epicenter of Monday’s massive, 7.9-magnitude quake.
The Sichuan Daily newspaper reported on its Web site that more than 26,000 people were injured in Mianyang. The numbers of casualties was expected to rise due to the remoteness of the areas affected by the quake and difficulty in finding buried victims. There was little prospect that many survivors would be found under the rubble. Only 58 people were extricated from demolished buildings across the quake area so far, China Seismological Bureau spokesman Zhang Hongwei told Xinhua. In one county, 80 percent of the buildings were destroyed.
Rain was impeding efforts and a group of paratroopers called off a rescue mission to the epicenter due to heavy storms, Xinhua reported. More than two dozen British and American tourists who were thought to be panda-watching in the area also remained missing.
Officials urged the public not to abandon hope. “Survivors can hold on for some time. Now it’s not time to give up,” Wang Zhenyao, disaster relief division director at the Ministry of Civil Affairs, told reporters in Beijing.
Premier Wen Jiabao, who rushed to the area to oversee rescue efforts, said a push was on to clear roads and restore electricity as soon as possible. His visit to the disaster scene was prominently featured on state TV, a gesture meant to reassure people that the ruling party was doing all it could.
“We will save the people,” Wen said through a bullhorn to survivors as he toured the disaster scene, in footage shown on CCTV. “As long as the people are there, factories can be built into even better ones, and so can the towns and counties.”
State media said rescue workers had reached the epicenter in Wenchuan county — where the number of casualties was still unknown. The quake was centered just north of the Sichuan provincial capital of Chengdu in central China, tearing into urban areas and mountain villages.
Earthquake rescue experts in orange jumpsuits extricated bloody survivors on stretchers from demolished buildings. Some 20,000 soldiers and police arrived in the disaster area with 30,000 more on the way by plane, train, trucks and even on foot, the Defense Ministry told Xinhua.
Aftershocks rattled the region for a second day, sending people running into the streets in Chengdu. The U.S. Geological Survey measured the shocks between magnitude 4 and 6, some of the strongest since Monday’s quake. Zhou Chun, a 70-year-old retired mechanic, was leaving Dujiangyan with a soiled light blue blanket draped over his shoulders.
“My wife died in the quake. My house was destroyed,” he said. “I am going to Chengdu, but I don’t know where I’ll live.” Zhou and other survivors were pulling luggage and clutching plastic bags of food amid a steady drizzle and the constant wall of ambulances.