China Rushing Aid to Quake Survivors

(April 15) -- Chinese convoys are snaking westward with medicine and tents for survivors of an earthquake on the edge of the Tibetan plateau that's killed more than 600 and left tens of thousands homeless high in the bitter cold mountains.

The death toll from Wednesday's 6.9-magnitude quake soared to 617 today, and Chinese authorities say it's bound to rise as workers sift through thousands of collapsed wood and mud brick homes. Freezing temperatures give little hope that survivors could live for very long under the rubble.

Even expert rescuers are ailing from working through the night against frigid winds and altitude sickness. The quake rattled a windswept plain in western China's mountainous Qinghai area, where the average elevation is 13,000 feet.

State media say 10,000 people have been injured, 1,000 of them severely. Hundreds of residents are still missing, including more than 60 Buddhist monks whose hilltop monastery was left in ruins.

Near the epicenter in Yushu county, wounded survivors slept outdoors in a horse-racing track, waiting for doctors to arrive as temperatures plummeted and aftershocks continued through the night.

"This feels like a war zone. It's a complete mess. At night, people were crying and shouting. Women were crying for their families," hotel manager Ren Yu told The Associated Press. "Some of the people have broken legs or arms but all they can get now is an injection. They were crying in pain."

Among the dead are at least 66 children who'd been lining up for classes when their schoolhouses collapsed on top of them. Ten teachers died, and 70 percent of the schools in Yushu are destroyed, state media said.

Chinese broadcaster CCTV showed parents huddled outside a vocational school anxiously watching rescuers as they pulled debris from a huge heap under which 15 people were said to be buried.

Some 1,200 miles from Beijing, the area is home to Tibetan farmers and herdsmen who live on pastoral land dotted with coal, tin, lead and copper mines. The quake severed roads and communication lines and sparked avalanches careening down from some of the world's highest mountains, complicating efforts to ship relief supplies to the high-altitude region. A huge dam nearby suffered major cracks, state media reported, threatening deadly floods if it were to give way.

State television showed block after block of flattened homes in the town of Jiegu, where officials said 85 percent of buildings were destroyed.

"It's very ghastly. The whole town has come down," Tashi Tsering, who works for a local education and health charity, told the AP. "Most of the houses are made of wood and mud so they have totally collapsed to the ground. I'm sure there are some alive underneath but I don't think there are many of them." Survivors needed emergency medical supplies, water, sanitation, food and clothing, he added.

Beijing immediately allocated $30 million for relief, and mobilized more than 5,000 soldiers, medical workers and other rescuers, joining 700 troops already on the ground.

Because the quake-stricken area is close to Tibet, there are large numbers of Chinese troops stationed in the area -- more than a such a rural area would typically have. Those forces responded immediately after Wednesday's quake, and more reinforcements are en route from across China.

Military convoys crowded the two-lane highway toward Yushu, with huge trucks carrying construction gear, water, satellite communications equipment and medicine. Aside from time-consuming land routes, the closest major airport is in Xining, about 530 miles away. State media showed footage of Chinese troops, firefighters and rescue teams assembling there before dawn this morning. A line of buses idled nearby, waiting to ferry them to the quake zone -- a 12-hour trip at best.

Meanwhile, as survivors await help, state media reported that hundreds of people were pulled out of the rubble alive overnight. In one case, workers extracted a girl who'd been trapped beneath a heap of debris for 12 hours.

"I can't feel my arm," said the girl, whose rescue was shown on CCTV. The workers tried to calm her and gave her water, while others used pieces of stray wood from the wreckage to prop up the pile of rubble and take its weight off of her. Then rescuers gingerly pulled her out and carried her to a stretcher as she thanked them: "I'm sorry for the trouble. Thank you, I will never forget this."

Earthquakes are common on the Tibetan plateau, but they rarely cause mass casualties because the area is so sparsely populated. Still, the U.S. Geological Survey said this is the strongest quake since 1976 to strike within 60 miles of the area.

A massive 8.0-magnitude earthquake hit neighboring Sichuan in southwestern China in May 2008, leaving nearly 90,000 people dead or missing and millions homeless. Rebuilding still continues from that quake.