Hurting and Homeless

Gao Tianyou clenches his hands round his wife's arms and shoulders, gripping her tenderly through the pink and white bedspread that encloses her. Two days after the earthquake that has killed, by the latest estimate, nearly 15,000 people in central China, he has pulled her body from the rubble of his son's apartment block. "Her body is intact", he says convinced that if rescue had come quicker the retired math teacher could have lived. "She [only] had a cut hand and she was breathing" at first, he says.

Soldiers only just started digging through the rubble on this street in the hard-hit city of Dujiangyan on May 14. Debris from at least five apartment blocks is piled four stories high. Shops and a wholesale market have been crushed. Overall, more than 25,000 people are believed to be still trapped in the rubble left by the 7.9 quake.

Here, eight bodies are pulled out in less than an hour. In most cities scenes like this would rank as a major catastrophe, but it's merely one of a dozen big rescue sites in Dujiangyan, and it's lower priority than some. Across the city, most buildings look intact at first glance, but large cracks spidering across walls have driven most locals to sleep on the street. They're without electricity, dependent on fire trucks for water and have little chance of using their homes anytime soon.

The government has done its utmost to mobilize its military--one soldier based in the capital of Chengdu said his unit was on the road 10 minutes after the quake hit--but they can barely cope. Gao asked for help pull out his dead wife, but soldiers told him they had to find survivors first.

Many people have responded by volunteering. Outside the collapsed market, a chain of young adults hold hands Woodstock-style to keep back distressed spectators; they wear yellow ribbons tied round their wrists. Many are college students. The Young Communist League (YCL) is marshaling the volunteers at rescue scenes, but few are members. It's merely that the league provides an officially approved national framework. "We're all trying our best to help. Of course the government can call up more people, but we don't need that call, we came ourselves," says Mu Jin, 21, an economics student taking part in the YCL's human chain.

Instead of emptying the roads, the quake has made the short highway from Sichuan's provincial capital, to Dujiangyan far more crowded as usual, according to our driver. Car owners are volunteering to take the injured to hospitals in Chengdu.