Death toll in China earthquake rises to 9,600, may go higher

Rescuers search the rubble of the collapsed Juyuan middle school where six children died in Dujiangyan, in southwest China’s Sichuan province after an earthquake measuring 7.8 rocked the province.

CHONGQING, China - A massive earthquake struck central China on Monday, killing more than 9,600 people, trapping nearly 900 students under the rubble of their school and raising fears the overall death toll could increase sharply.
In Beichuan county, just east of the epicenter, 80 percent of the buildings had collapsed and some 10,000 people were injured aside from the 7,000 to 9,000 dead, the official Xinhua News Agency said. Xinhua cited the Sichuan provincial government as saying 7,651 people died in the province but the situation in at least two counties remain unclear.
The 7.8-magnitude earthquake struck in the middle of the afternoon _ when classrooms and office towers were full _ 57 miles (92 kilometers) northwest of Sichuan’s capital of Chengdu. The quake emptied office buildings across the country in Beijing; could be felt as far away as Vietnam; crashed telephone networks; and hours later, left parts of Chengdu, a city of 10 million, in darkness.
In Juyuan town in Dujiangyan city, just south of the epicenter, the middle school collapsed, burying the students and immediately killing four ninth graders, the official Xinhua News Agency reported. Xinhua said its reporters in Juyuan town saw buried teenagers struggling to break free from the rubble ¢while others were crying out for help.’
Photos posted on the Internet and found on the Chinese search engine Baidu showed arms and a torso sticking out of the rubble of the school as dozens of people worked to free them, using small mechanical winches or their hands to move concrete slabs. Xinhua said 50 bodies had been pulled from the debris but did not say if they were alive.
Another photo from Wenchuan, closest to the epicenter, showed what appeared to have been a six-story building flattened, ripped away from taller buildings of gray concrete. Xinhua reported students were also buried under five other toppled schools in Deyang city.
The communist leadership said late Monday that ¢thousands’ had died, and that besides those in Sichuan, the quake had caused deaths in three other provinces and the mega-city of Chongqing.
Beijing mobilized more than 5,000 soldiers and police to provide rescue in Sichuan and put the province on the second-highest level of emergency footing. Premier Wen Jiabao, a geologist by training, called the quake ¢a major geological disaster’ and flew into Chengdu to oversee the rescue and relief operations.
The quake was one of the deadliest in three decades and posed a challenge to a government already grappling with discontent over high inflation and a widespread uprising among Tibetans in western China while trying to prepare for the Beijing Olympics this August.
Stock markets in Shanghai and Shenzhen seesawed Monday, dropping on inflation worries and then rising and tapering off over worries about the quake’s economic impact to post slight gains.
The epicenter lies on a fault where South Asia pushes against the Eurasian land mass, smashing the Sichuan plain into mountains leading to the Tibetan highlands, near communities that rose up in sometimes violent protests against Chinese rule in mid-March.
Much of the area has been closed to foreign media and travelers since, compounding the difficulties of getting information from the region. Chengdu’s airport was closed. For much of the day, electric power and telephone networks into Chengdu and other affected areas were down, and panicked residents overloaded parts of the remaining telephone system with calls.
Residents fled into the streets and described an eerie feeling as people stayed outside into the night, fearing another quake. State media citing the Sichuan seismology bureau reported 313 aftershocks.
Although it was difficult to telephone Chengdu, an Israeli student, Ronen Medzini, sent a text message to The Associated Press saying there were power and water outages there.
¢Traffic jams, no running water, power outs, everyone sitting in the streets, patients evacuated from hospitals sitting outside and waiting,’ Medzini said.
A reporter from a US public radio network, National Public Radio, said the earthquake hit around 2:30 p.m. and lasted about three minutes total.
¢I was in a building, everybody raced outside when we felt it. The building started to shake, there was a huge rumble, and everybody ran,’ said NPR reporter Melissa Block in comments aired by the network.
¢There’s still many, many people out in the streets, they don’t want to go back into the buildings, because there are rumors of aftershocks and possible secondary quakes,’ she said as she drove through Chengdu.
The quake was centered about 6 miles (10 kilometers) below the surface, the US Geological Survey said on its Web site. The depth of the quake made it so wide-ranging, Chinese and Western seismologists said.
State television broadcast tips for anyone trapped in the earthquake. ¢If you’re buried, keep calm and conserve your energy. Seek water and food, and wait patiently for rescue,’ CCTV said.
The earthquake also rattled buildings in Beijing 930 miles (1,500 kilometers) to the north, causing office towers to evacuate. People ran screaming into the streets in other cities, where many residents said they had never felt an earthquake.
Some 660 miles (1,100 kilometers) to the east in Anhui province, chandeliers swayed in the lobby of the Buckingham Palace Hotel. ¢We’ve never felt anything like this our whole lives,’ said a hotel employee surnamed Zhu.
Patients at the Fuyang People’s No. 1 Hospital were evacuated. An hour after the quake, a half-dozen patients in blue-striped pajamas stood outside the hospital. One was laying on a hospital bed in the parking lot.
In Beijing, where hundreds of thousands of foreign visitors are expected for the Olympics, which start on Aug. 8, venues for the games were undamaged.
Li Jiulin, a top engineer on the 91,000-seat National Stadium _ known as the Bird’s Nest and the jewel of the Olympics _ was conducting an inspection at the venue when the quake occurred. He told reporters the building was designed to withstand a 8.0 quake.
¢The Olympic venues were not affected by the earthquake,’ said Sun Weide, a spokesman for the Beijing organizing committee. ¢We considered earthquakes when building those venues.’
Premier Wen, after arriving in Chengdu, traveled to Dujiangyan, near the collapsed middle school. One his aircraft, he appealed for people to rally together.
¢This is an especially challenging task,’ state television showed Wen saying, reading from a statement. ¢In the face of the disaster, what’s most important is calmness, confidence, courage and powerful command.’
A magnitude 7.8 earthquake is considered a major event, capable of causing widespread damage and injuries in populated areas.
The quake appeared to be the deadliest since the most devastating in modern history, which killed 240,000 people in the city of Tangshan, near Beijing in 1976.
A 1933 quake near the area where Monday’s struck killed at least 9,000, according to geologists.