The race to the rescue(Epicenter of the quake: Yingxiu Town in Wenchuan County) Epicenter, County, quake, race, Town

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AID supplies arrived in Wenchuan County, the epicenter of Monday's massive earthquake in Sichuan Province for the first time yesterday. Rescuers scoured flattened mountain villages for thousands of missing and buried victims while the entire nation was mobilized to help.

By 8pm yesterday the People's Liberation Army had delivered 33.3 tons of relief aid and transferred 156 injured people by helicopter from Wenchuan County and other quake-stricken towns.

The army also ordered the deployment of another 30,000 personnel to join the rescue efforts. They would join 47,813 PLA, armed police and paramilitary personnel already working in the province.

Because roads connecting Dujiangyan and Wenchuan, the epicenter of Monday's 7.8-magnitude quake, have been seriously damaged, the army will parachute more troops and supplies to quake-hit areas in the next two days.

As help began to arrive in the hardest-to-reach areas, some victims trapped for more than two days under collapsed buildings were still being pulled out alive. But the enormous scale of the devastation meant that resources were stretched thin, and makeshift aid stations and refugee centers were springing up all over the disaster area.

Hospitals have been leveled, forcing doctors and nurses to treat survivors in the street.

Rescuers who had marched into the town of Yingxiu in Wenchuan County yesterday found only 2,300 survivors from a town of about 10,000, with another 1,000 badly injured. A paramilitary officer who arrived at Wenchuan told Sichuan TV that a third of the houses there had been destroyed and more than 90 percent were damaged.

Premier Wen Jiabao took a helicopter yesterday afternoon to Wenchuan as rescuers were clearing damaged roads to the county.

Wen's trip is the latest in his efforts to reach out to the victims.
"The earthquake can shake the mountains and block rivers but it will never diminish our determination to unite and help each other in the face of these catastrophes," Wen said yesterday morning while speaking to villagers in Beichuan County, 50 kilometers from Wenchuan.

The premier, 66, is leading rescue efforts in the worst disaster to hit the country in three decades.

"Your pain is our pain," he said amid a group of villagers in Beichuan, some with bloodstained faces and wiping away tears. "Saving lives is the most important task."

Amid the overwhelming gloom, there were also moments of joy.

In Mianzhu, where thousands have been confirmed dead, about 500 people were pulled alive from collapsed buildings.

Separately, some 2,000 soldiers were rushed to repair "extremely dangerous" cracks in the Zipingpu Dam upriver from the earthquake-hit town of Dujiangyan.

The National Development and Reform Commission, the nation's top planning body, said yesterday that the earthquake had damaged 391 dams, mostly small ones.

From Shanghaidaily

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