 Heartbreak in China
The Walls Tumble Down
By SIMON ELEGANT/BEIJING, AUSTIN RAMZY/DUJIANGYAN
Zhang Xuede stands near what was once the Xinjian Elementary School surrounded by mud, debris, twisted metal and slabs of concrete. The 70-year-old has kept vigil in the city of Dujiangyan for the better part of a day after a 7.9-magnitude earthquake rocked China's Sichuan province on May 12, flattening the school his grandson attended.
"After the quake hit, I ran to the school and started removing rubble," Zhang says. "I uncovered several children. Some were dead, some were still alive. But I couldn't find my grandson." Unlike many of the other parents and relatives waiting in the rain, Zhang seems drained of hope that his grandson will be found and rescued. When a neighbor asks about the boy, Zhang replies flatly: "He's dead."
That awful realization awaits tens of thousands of Chinese as time inexorably runs out for their loved ones who on May 14 were still trapped in collapsed apartment blocks, homes, schools and factories. A huge relief effort, including 50,000 Chinese soldiers, was under way, but the devastation from the powerful quake, which rocked skyscrapers in cities as far away as Bangkok and Taipei, was vast.
Two days after the first shock, the official death toll had risen to almost 15,000 — and was certain to soar. Whatever the final toll, the Wenchuan earthquake, named for the Sichuan county at the epicenter, will likely be China's worst natural disaster since a quake erupted under the northeastern town of Tangshan in 1976, killing an estimated 242,000. ...
Read TIME Magazine (Asia Edition), May 26, 2008 Online
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