| 16 weeks 6 days 4 hours ago Toll from China quake estimated at 3,000 to 5,000
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BEIJING (AP) - A massive earthquake struck central China on
Monday and state media reported that as many as 5,000 people were
killed in a single county while nearly 900 students were trapped
under the rubble of their school.
The official Xinhua News Agency said 80 percent of the buildings
had collapsed in Beichuan county in Sichuan province after the
7.8-magnitude quake.
Xinhua reported that 3,000 to 5,000 people had died in Beichuan,
which has a population of 160,000, raising fears the overall death
toll could increase sharply. Another 10,000 people were believed to
be hurt.
The earthquake sent thousands of people rushing out of buildings
and into the streets hundreds of miles away in Beijing and
Shanghai. The temblor was felt as far away as Pakistan, Vietnam and
Thailand.
Rescuers had recovered at least 50 bodies from the debris of the
school building in Juyuan township, about 60 miles from the
epicenter. Xinhua did not say if any students had been pulled out
alive.
An unknown number of students also were reported buried after
buildings collapsed at five other schools in Deyang city in
Sichuan, Xinhua reported.
It said its reporters saw buried teenagers struggling to break
loose from underneath the rubble of the three-story building in
Juyuan "while others were crying out for help."
Two girls were quoted by Xinhua as saying they escaped because
they had "run faster than others."
The earthquake comes less than three months before the start of
the Beijing Summer Olympics, when China hopes to use to showcase
its rise in the world.
Shanghai's main index inched up Monday, but the advance was
capped by worries over inflation and potential damage from the
earthquake. Analysts said that shares of companies located in the
Sichuan region may fall in coming sessions due to the quake.
It struck in the middle of the afternoon when classes and office
towers were full, about 60 miles northwest of Chengdu. There were
several smaller aftershocks, the U.S. Geological Survey said on its
Web site.
Calls into the city did not go through as panicked residents
quickly overloaded the telephone system. The quake affected
telephone and power networks, and even state media appeared to have
few details of the disaster.
"In Chengdu, mobile telecommunication convertors have
experienced jams and thousands of servers were out of service,"
said Sha Yuejia, deputy chief executive officer of China Mobile.
Although it was difficult to telephone Chengdu, an Israeli
student, Ronen Medzini, sent a text message to The Associated Press
saying there were power and water outages there.
"Traffic jams, no running water, power outs, everyone sitting
in the streets, patients evacuated from hospitals sitting outside
and waiting," he said.
Xinhua said an underground water pipe ruptured near the city's
southern railway station, flooding a main thoroughfare. Reporters
saw buildings with cracks in their walls but no collapses, Xinhua
said.
The earthquake also rattled buildings in Beijing, some 930 miles
to the north, less than three months before the Chinese capital was
expected to be full of hundreds of thousands of foreign visitors
for the Summer Olympics.
Many Beijing office towers were evacuated, including the
building housing the media offices for the organizers of the
Olympics, which start in August. None of the Olympic venues was
damaged.
"I've lived in Taipei and California and I've been through
quakes before. This is the most I've ever felt," said James
McGregor, a business consultant who was inside the LG Towers in
Beijing's business district. "The floor was moving underneath
me."
In Fuyang, 660 miles to the east, chandeliers in the lobby of
the Buckingham Palace Hotel swayed. "We've never felt anything
like this our whole lives," said a hotel employee surnamed Zhu.
Patients at the Fuyang People's No. 1 Hospital were evacuated.
An hour after the quake, a half-dozen patients in blue-striped
pajamas stood outside the hospital. One was laying on a hospital
bed in the parking lot.
Skyscrapers in Shanghai swayed and most office occupants went
rushing into the streets.
In the Taiwanese capital of Taipei, 100 miles off the
southeastern Chinese coast, buildings swayed when the quake hit.
There were no immediate reports of injuries or damage.
The quake was felt as far away as the Vietnamese capital of
Hanoi, where some people hurried out of swaying office buildings
and into the streets downtown. A building in the Thai capital of
Bangkok also was evacuated after the quake was felt there.
A magnitude 7.8 earthquake is considered a major event, capable
of causing widespread damage and injuries in populated areas.
The last serious earthquake in China was in 2003, when a
6.8-magnitude quake killed 268 people in Bachu county in the west
of Xinjiang.
China's deadliest earthquake in modern history struck the
northeastern city of Tangshan on July 28, 1976, killing 240,000
people.
(Copyright 2008 by The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.)
