05/15/2008
China issued a rare public appeal Thursday for rescue equipment as the government struggled to cope with this week's powerful earthquake, while workers broke through key roads to the epicenter in the race to find survivors.
More than 72 hours after the earthquake rattled central China, rescue operations appeared to shift from poring through downed buildings for survivors to the grim duty of searching for bodies, with nearly 15,000 confirmed dead from Monday's temblor.
The official death toll stood at 14,866, and in Sichuan province more than 27,000 people were buried or missing, according to the official Xinhua News Agency.
The government issued a rare appeal to the Chinese public calling for donations of rescue equipment including hammers, shovels, demolition tools and rubber boats. The plea on the Ministry of Information Industry's Web Site said, for example, that 100 cranes were needed. "This is only a beginning of this battle, and a long way lies ahead of us", Vice Health Minister Gao Qiang told reporters in Beijing. "We will never give up hope", he said. "For every thread of hope, our efforts will increase one hundredfold. We will never give up".
No outbreaks of disease had struck refugees, who were being immunized against some illnesses, Gao said. Workers were seeking to ensure safety of drinking water and removing corpses to prevent the spread of bacteria. After days of refusing foreign relief workers, China accepted an offer from Japan to send a rescue team, Foreign Ministry spokesman Qin Gang said in an announcement posted on the ministry Web site.
The International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies also issued an emergency appeal for medical help, food, water and tents. Gu Qinghui, the federation's disaster management director for East Asia who visited Beichuan county near the epicenter, said more than 4 million homes were shattered across the quake area. "The whole county has been destroyed. Basically there is no Beichuan county anymore", Gu said in Beijing.
Plans for the Defense Ministry to deploy 101 more helicopters underscored worries that a death toll will skyrocket as time runs out for buried survivors. Nearly 26,000 people remained trapped in collapsed buildings. Forty-four counties and districts in Sichuan were severely hit, with about half of the 20 million people living there directly affected, Xinhua said. Roads were cleared Thursday to two key areas that felt the brunt of the quake's force, with workers making it to the border of Wenchuan county at the epicenter and also through to hard-hit Beichuan county, Xinhua reported.
Communication cables were also reconnected to Wenchuan. Roads to the epicenter had been blocked by debris since the 7.9 magnitude quake, preventing rescuers from moving heavy equipment to the worst-affected areas. Previously, soldiers riding to isolated mountain villages on helicopters and small boats had been forced to dig for survivors with their hands.
The Chengdu Military Area Command also planned to airdrop 50,000 packets of food, 5,000 cotton-padded quilts and clothes there, part of the military rescue operation that has grown to more than 130,000 soldiers and police. Three mountainous towns north of the provincial capital of Chengdu were still cut off, Xinhua said, with 20,000 residents trapped in the towns of Qingping, Jinhua and Tianchi. The number of casualties was unknown. Xinhua said a team of 500 People's Liberation Army soldiers carrying medicine and food were attempting to hike into the towns again. Dujiangyan city was clogged with buses and trucks decked out with banners from companies saying they were offering aid to the disaster area.
One tour bus was stuffed full of water bottles, cartons of biscuits and instant noodles. Public donations so far have totaled 877 million yuan (US$125 million; $81 million) in both cash and goods. NBA star Yao Ming, China's most famous athlete, was planning to donate 2 million yuan (US$285,000, $185,000) to the relief effort, agent Erik Zhang said.
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