Chinese Troops Arrive at Quake Epicenter

By RICHARD SPENCER, The Daily Telegraph
May 16, 2008

Yingxiu, China — In the mountains at the heart of China's earthquake, thousands of troops were arriving by helicopter, on foot, and by boat yesterday to bring supplies to the survivors.

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© Aly Song / Reuters

SEARCH AND RECOVER Rescue workers walk past covered bodies in Wenchuan County, China, yesterday. Aid reached China's earthquake-devastated areas, but the magnitude of caring for tens of thousands of homeless, grieving survivors threatened to overwhelm relief efforts.

Moving in the opposite direction to the army in Wenchuan County, the epicenter of Monday's earthquake, scores of refugees stumbled along broken roads and over the hills to the safety of the valleys below.

As the Daily Telegraph came up river with an army troop bringing bottled water, the impact of the earthquake was immediately visible.

One major bridge had lost its central section and landslides scarred the hills, which were littered with pine trees, strewn like matchsticks. Wenchuan county is one of the most spectacular in China. But its scenery, which makes it so attractive to the thousands of tourists who visit every year, is now the enemy of its desperate people.

The hillsides are sheer, supporting few roads and few places for helicopters to land. The rivers rush in torrents allowing limited access even by boat.

Its lushness is fed by the rains and the fogs that prevented any rescue efforts by air for the first 24 hours.

On the way to Yingxiu, a town where the Chinese government estimates that 8,000 of the 10,000 population have died, the elevated road had fallen from its concrete pillars on to the riverbank below.

Outside the town, scores of people, many seriously injured, lay on stretchers, wrapped in blankets to cover their nakedness because their clothes were in shreds.

Helicopters came and went, ferrying them away to safety, but such is the scale of the disaster that even by nightfall many remained, left to sleep in the open.

Gao Zongqing, 62, had been waiting three days for help, his legs a tangled mess. "I was at home when the earthquake hit," he said. "The buildings fell all around me."

"I was there for two or three hours in the wreckage before I was pulled out. They brought me here from my home."

Some were carried on stretchers to the boat used by the army after two hours of scrambling over rocks from the town.

Others staggered on sticks, one or two were even carried on the backs of rescuers. Many had lost families. "This is my niece" said Zhang Li, who made it to the boat at lunchtime. "My own 13-year-old daughter is dead."

Other victims were laid out in shrouds further up the river bank. We counted 30 corpses from small children to the elderly laid out in a long row. In nearby Yingxiu, half of the buildings had collapsed and the rest were slumped at 45 degrees. The northern half of the town had fallen in on itself taking with it offices, shops and the primary school, where 400 children died, a resident said. Cars lay smashed and tangled under lumps of concrete.

There was a rare moment of joy for the rescue teams in the town yesterday.

An 11-year-old girl was pulled from the ruins of the school after 68 hours in the rubble.

"It's wonderful, she's alive," one onlooker said as the girl was tended by a dozen nurses.

They wiped her semi-conscious body with disinfectant and checked her pulse before taking her away for treatment.

She was weak and semi-conscious, but was expected to recover. Only one other child has been rescued from the school.

One mother was wailing in grief as she bent over the corpse of her son, aged 10. "Why did you leave your mother? Why did you die?" she asked, before draping him in clean clothes that she had brought from home.