President flies to quake zone as death toll soars

May 16 2008 Media Wales

Chinese president Hu Jintao flew into Sichuan province today to lend support to earthquake victims as the country braced for a death toll that could soar past 50,000.

Nearly four days after the quake hit, Chinese soldiers and police also finally reached all 58 counties and townships severely damaged, state media said.

Mr Hu will “express sympathy and appreciation to the public and cadres in the disaster zone and visit military officers, soldiers and medical personnel on the frontlines of disaster relief and rescue efforts”, said the official Xinhua News Agency.

His plane landed in Mianyang city, which has become a receiving centre for survivors pouring out of devastated areas in the earthquake’s epicentre 60 miles to the west.

He joins premier Wen Jiabao, who has been in the earthquake zone since shortly after it hit on Monday.

“Now it is still the critical period of saving lives. As long as there is even one glimmer of hope, we will ... never easily give up,” Mr Wen said today.

But mostly it was a painful search for bodies, with a confirmed death toll of 19,509. but the Earthquake and Disaster Relief Headquarters of the State Council, the country’s Cabinet, said deaths could rise above 50,000, state TV reported.

Tens of thousands could still be buried in collapsed buildings in Sichuan province, where the quake was centred, the province’s vice governor told reporters.

The grim working of burying the victims also picked up pace. In Luoshui town north of the provincial capital Chengdu, troops used a mechanical shovel to dig a pit on a hilltop to bury the dead. Two bodies wrapped in white sheets lay near the pit.

Police and militia in nearby Dujiangyan pulverised rubble with cranes and backhoes while crews used shovels to pick around larger pieces of debris. On one side street, about a dozen bodies were laid on a pavement, while incense sticks placed in a pile of sand sent smoke into the air as a tribute and to dull the stench of death.

A rescue crew from Japan was also at work after arriving early Friday morning. China had initially been reluctant to accept foreign offers of help, but the Foreign Ministry said in a statement early Friday that specialist teams from Russia, South Korea, and Singapore were also welcome.

Singapore’s foreign ministry said a 55-member team would arrive in Sichuan later.

But experts said the time for rescues was growing short.

“Anyone buried in an earthquake can survive without water and food for three days,” said Gu Linsheng, a researcher with Tsinghua University’s Emergency Management Research Centre. “After that, it’s usually a miracle for anyone to survive.”

More than 130,000 soldiers and police had joined the relief operation, Xinhua said. By late yesterday they had reached all the epicentre areas that had been cut off by landslides.

Nearly 70,000 injured people had been admitted to hospitals in Sichuan, Dr Shen Ji, director general of the provincial health department, said.

He said disease prevention was now a key part of the earthquake relief. “Up to now, there’s no occurrence of earthquake-related epidemic disease outbreak,” he said.

The health ministry posted a notice on its website for disease prevention, saying saving lives was the top priority. “Afterwards, public sanitation and epidemic control and prevention should be thoroughly carried out,” it said.

It said bodies should be cleaned on the spot and buried as soon as possible.

The International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies issued an emergency appeal for medical help, food, water and tents.

The grim search for bodies also included children. In Mianzhu, close to where Mr Hu arrived, seven schools had collapsed, burying 1,700 people, Xinhua said. About 1,300 bodies had been recovered so far, it said.

In the same area, 700 pupils were thought to have been buried in a school in Hanwang town, while further north in Beichuan, 360 had been rescued from the ruins of a school in Beichuan county, Xinhua said. But another 700 are still buried.