China Quake Toll Up to 50,000

Wenchuan County, China — China's government warned yesterday that 50,000 people may have died in the earthquake that has devastated large areas of Sichuan province.

So far, 19,509 people are known to have been killed — a rise of more than 4,000 on Wednesday's estimate of the disaster's toll — and the earthquake has directly affected 10 million people. Survivors are still being pulled from the ruins of their homes and buildings. A 22-year-old woman, was rescued from the rubble in Dujiangyan. But time is running out in the search for survivors from the earthquake, which struck on Monday. "Generally speaking, anyone buried in an earthquake can survive without water and food for three days," a researcher with Tsinghua University's emergency management research centre, Gu Linsheng, said. "After that, it's usually a miracle for anyone to survive."

Nineteen British tourists who were rescued from the Wolong panda reserve in Wenchuan, where they had been sheltering since the earthquake struck, yesterday said they feared being "buried alive."