Artykuły

Survivors of quake urged to hang on as troops arrive

• Peter Goff, Zipingpu Dam in Sichuan and Tania Branigan in Hanwang
• The Guardian,
• Thursday May 15 2008

 

 

Survivors of the Chinese earthquake plead for help in one of the worst affected areas

Thousands of Chinese troops fought to avert further disasters last night after "extremely dangerous" cracks appeared in a massive dam, and hydropower stations were said to be badly damaged, after Monday's earthquake. As the official death toll rose to almost 15,000 - with another 26,000 still buried and 1,400 missing in Sichuan province alone - the state media warned that the city of Dujiangyan and much of the Chengdu plain would be swamped, if the Zipingpu hydropower dam burst.

As night fell, the government said the structure was safe, but officials warned that two hydropower stations in Maoxian county, near the quake's epicentre, were seriously damaged.

Landslides had blocked the flow of two rivers in northern Qingchuan county, forming a huge lake in a region where 1,000 have already died and 700 are buried, Xinhua said. "The rising water could cause mountains to collapse. We desperately need geological experts to carry out tests and fix a rescue plan," the official Xinhua news agency quoted the county's communist party chief, Li Hao, as saying.

One hundred thousand troops and police have poured into a disaster area the size of Belgium, with thousands of volunteers searching rubble, feeding the hungry and ferrying the injured to safety.

There were moments of joy as survivors trapped for more than two days under collapsed buildings were pulled out alive. A woman eight months pregnant was pulled to safety after spending 50 hours trapped in rubble. And hundreds of troops finally reached Wenchuan county, the epicentre of the quake, after hiking for tens of miles across mountainous terrain. Heavy rain had halted efforts to parachute in troops.

Government officials warned that they had found the situation "much worse than expected", Xinhua said. Rescuers who reached Yingxiu found only 2,300 survivors in the town of about 10,000, with another 1,000 badly hurt. Other nearby towns remain cut off.

"The Communist Party central committee has not forgotten this place," the Chinese premier, Wen Jiabao, pledged after flying by helicopter to Wenchuan, adding that some 50 injured people had been airlifted out. State television showed him crawling into collapsed buildings to urge survivors to hang on.

Xinhua reported that the airforce had dropped 9.1 tonnes of medicine, quilts and radios to the area and would soon deliver further aid. The paramilitary police said Wenchuan needed 35 tonnes of food a day, as well as 12,000 tents for the homeless.

Workers used dynamite to try to clear a winding access road which ran past the Zipingpu dam, littered with boulders and debris from the quake. The explosions prompted fears of more landslides, as did a forecast for further rain.

"The locals here have had it really hard," said a soldier, Dong Jianguo. "Things have been so bad, so terrible, and there's still so much danger around."

Xinhua warned that Beichuan, another cut-off mountainous area, required 50,000 tents, 200,000 blankets, 300,000 coats, drinking water and medicine.

Pictures showed streets where not a single building stood. Survivors lay dazed on the ground next to the dead.

But rescuers managed to save Song Xinyi, a three-year-old girl who had been trapped for more than 40 hours under the bodies of her parents, Xinhua reported.

As rescuers struggled to handle the worst quake to hit China since 1976 - when hundreds of thousands died in the northeast city of Tangshan - state radio broadcast pleas for donations of food, water, equipment and blood.

Volunteers who had only just escaped trooped towards badly-hit areas to deliver aid. In Mianyang, Sichuan, residents gave free food and offered clothes to 10,000 survivors who had gathered at a sports ground. "We feel very moved," said Li Bowei, 34, who had fled from Beichuan.

At Zipingpu, buildings close to the 156-metre high dam had been flattened. Earlier, farmers on the Chengdu plain were urged to move to higher land as officials discharged water to alleviate the pressure on the dam.

alleviate – umniejszać, ulżyć

avert – oddalać, zażegnywać

crawl – pełzać, czołgać się

dazed - oszołomiony

death toll – żniwo śmierci, ofiary śmiertelne

landslide – osunięcie się ziemi

littered – zaśmiecony, usłany

pledge – zobowiązywać się, przyrzekać

quilt- kołdra

rubble - gruzy

swamp – zalewać, zatapiać

urge - namawiać

winding - kręty

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