Death Toll Rising in China

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Picking Up the Pieces

China continues recovery efforts after a devastating 7.9-magnitude earthquake hit central China on May 12, 2008, and rendered millions of people homeless.

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"We will save people," Wen said in a talk to survivors and rescue workers broadcast by the party's China Central Television.

Wen, who flew in from Beijing soon after the scale of the disaster became known, has been photographed and televised repeatedly directing rescue workers and shouting encouragement to victims. His display of concern, and its wide reporting by the official media, was in marked contrast to the secretive way the Communist Party has handled emergencies in the past.

The toll of China's deadliest earthquake, a temblor at Tangshan in 1976 that killed about 240,000, was considered a state secret for years. But since the Sichuan quake struck at 2:28 Monday afternoon, government officials have provided regular updates for distribution by the New China News Agency. Apparently seeking to control the message, however, the Central Propaganda Bureau told Chinese editors Tuesday not to dispatch their own reporters to the scene, according to journalists in Beijing.

The party leadership announced in Beijing that its elite Politburo Standing Committee had met with President Hu Jintao in command to make sure the government went all-out to save as many people as possible. "Time is life," said a Standing Committee statement.

As offers of aid flowed in from foreign governments, China's Civil Affairs Ministry welcomed the help but said foreign volunteers would not be admitted. At this stage, Chinese authorities would not be able to deal with foreign rescue teams, the ministry's Zhen Yaowang told reporters in Beijing.

An estimated 900 eighth- and ninth-grade students and their teachers were trapped in the Dujiangyan school where Wen paid his respects, officials told reporters. Another school with up to 1,000 students and teachers inside collapsed at Mianyang in Beichuan county, about 20 miles to the northeast, the New China News Agency said, and several schools were destroyed in and around Deyang, about 40 miles northeast of Chengdu.

About 60 bodies were pulled from the rubble in Dujiangyan, according to an Associated Press reporter on the scene. With communications down in much of the area, precise official information was not available.

Li Jian, 32, a restaurant owner who lives several miles away, said Dujiangyan townspeople were under strain because most spent the night outdoors under a cold mountain rain. "It was raining hard," he said by telephone. "We couldn't sleep. People were scared. And today, still, there were small earthquakes all through the day."

The Health Ministry in Beijing, meanwhile, issued an appeal for blood donations for victims. The Finance Ministry said it has allocated an initial $123 million for rescue efforts.

Despite the disaster here in Sichuan, the Beijing Organizing Committee for the Olympic Games sought to reassure potential foreign visitors that they will be safe during the Beijing Games in August. Zhang Jian, director of the committee's project management department, stressed to reporters in the capital that the quake area is a long way from Beijing and would have no effect on the Games.

Still, officials said that China is scaling back celebrations along the route of the Olympic torch out of respect for earthquake victims, and that it will observe a minute of silence each morning before the torch relay proceeds.

Donation boxes will also be set up along the relay route to help provide relief for victims of the quake, a statement said.

Jacques Rogge, president of the International Olympic Committee, sent a message of condolence to China's president, the committee announced. "The Olympic movement is at your side, especially during these difficult moments," he wrote. "Our thoughts are with you."

Correspondents Maureen Fan in Beijing and Jill Drew in Dujiangyan contributed to this report.