'We Must Race Against Time,' Premier Says in Televised Visit to Quake Scene
By Edward Cody and Maureen Fan
Washington Post Foreign Service
Thursday, May 15, 2008
FUXIN, China, May 14 -- The Chinese government accelerated its massive rescue-and-recovery operation Wednesday, dispatching hundreds of busloads of civilian rescue teams, paramilitary police and youthful volunteers toward earthquake-ravaged regions in a vivid demonstration of the Communist Party's power to mobilize.
Lines of buses and cars, many with red banners carrying political slogans, filled highways leading north from the Sichuan provincial capital of Chengdu, near the epicenter of Monday's quake. They were joined by trucks carrying cranes, front-end loaders and tarps. Li Chengyun, the vice governor of Sichuan, estimated that 26,000 people were still buried under collapsed buildings and that an additional 14,000 were missing, according to the official New China News Agency.
As rescue teams reached more isolated towns and villages, it became clear the death toll could eventually reach 50,000. On Wednesday, the number of con--firmed dead rose to nearly 15,000, according to a government estimate. The people of Fuxin, a farming village on the edge of Mianzhu city, 40 miles north of Chengdu, said they lost 300 children when the Fuxin No. 2 Primary School pancaked right after the tremor.
There were also concerns about disasters that could compound the crisis. A dam near the city of Dujiangyan had started to crack, forcing the deployment of 2,000 soldiers to forestall flooding.
Many rescue workers rolling into the region were deployed by the party, which maintains cells in almost every business and organization in the country. Aid convoys included cars and trucks from a variety of groups, including a four-wheel-drive vehicle club. Students rode in the back of open trucks, greeting passersby with the two-fingered victory sign as if on a class outing.
Premier Wen Jiabao made a televised visit to a collapsed middle school in Sichuan's Beichuan county, talking with the injured and their doctors in first-aid tents and urging on the rescue workers.
"Saving people's lives is the most important thing," he said. "Right now, we must race against time. If there is the slightest hope of rescuing those who are trapped, we will magnify our efforts 100 times."
With the appearance of sunny weather after two days of rain, military helicopters were seen flying above the quake zone for the first time. In addition, 100 troops parachuted into Maoxian county, another hard-hit zone cut off since Monday by mudslides and debris blocking the roads, the New China News Agency said.
Despite the devastation, China has rejected offers of help from foreign aid workers, including search-and-rescue experts from Australia, dog handlers from the Czech Republic and firefighters from Japan.
"Transportation in affected areas is obstructed, and it is impossible for our rescue teams to reach the disaster-hit areas. So the conditions are not yet ripe for us to allow international rescue teams into China," Wang Zhenyao, head of the Civil Affairs Ministry's relief department, told reporters.
The government has accepted offers of financial aid, and two Taiwanese nongovernmental groups -- Buddhist spiritual organizations -- were expected to arrive in Sichuan after negotiations among diplomats, according to media reports.
Still, China's refusal to permit entry to others reflected its distrust of outsiders, particularly foreign nongovernmental organizations.
"Beijing sometimes likes the assistance, but it has to be tightly controlled," said Russell Leigh Moses, a Beijing-based analyst of Chinese politics. "Local cadres see NGOs as a threat to their authority and an implicit criticism of their policies."
The military announced it had dropped food and medical supplies to badly damaged towns in Wenchuan and Beichuan counties, near the epicenter, and Premier Wen said 100,000 People's Liberation Army soldiers and People's Armed Police paramilitary troops were assigned to help in the rescue operation.
Wen visited Beichuan town, which was largely destroyed by the quake. With cameras of the Communist Party's China Central Television looking on, he put his arm around a woman and two young girls and pledged that the party would do its best to take care of them.
"Your suffering is our suffering," he told them. "The party and the government care about everybody."
The Associated Press said a 34-year-old pregnant woman, Zhang Xiaoyan, was pulled out from under concrete rubble in Dujiangyan after spending 50 hours under the debris. In the Beichuan region, a 3-year-old girl, identified as Song Xinyi, was eased out from under the bodies of her parents, where she had lain since Monday in a collapsed building, the New China News Agency said.
Wen has been visiting scenes of devastation since soon after the 7.9-magnitude earthquake struck. His message -- encouragement for rescue workers and compassion for quake victims -- has been widely reported in the party's official media, portraying a leadership firmly in charge and deeply concerned about the plight of the people.
The effort has paid off here in Fuxin. "Wen Jiabao went to Beichuan today. We have good leaders," said Bi Minfa, 62, a peasant who surveyed the destruction from under his conical straw hat.
The surge in rescue efforts could also be seen near Dujiangyan. A group of aid workers from Shanghai, wearing bright-orange jumpsuits and hard hats, carried extraction equipment including chain saws, bolt cutters and power tools up the road north of town.
Meanwhile, Beijing hospitals sent small numbers of personnel to Sichuan to assist quake victims. Luo Yan, a nurse from Jishuitan Hospital in the capital, said her group arrived in Mianyang on Tuesday evening and tried to travel north to aid victims on Wednesday. The road became impassable, though, forcing the group to return to Mianyang. She was told severely injured victims would be brought there, but by 3:30 p.m. Wednesday, none had arrived.
In Fuxin, Bi and other parents blamed the collapse of a primary school on shoddy materials, which they said were the result of corruption by officials responsible for making sure the school was safe. To back up their contention, they pointed out that the teachers' dormitory on one side and the administrative offices on the other stood firm, while the classrooms in the center buckled immediately, killing 300 children. Nearby homes also remained intact, they noted, unable to believe the quake's targets were just random.
"The whole thing was corrupt," said a mother who declined to give her name.
For Liu Nongyuan, however, the drama was elsewhere. Nongyuan, 9, was also a pupil at Fuxin No. 2 Primary School and was supposed to have been in class when the earthquake struck. He escaped the fate of his classmates, he said, only because he had lingered outside in a playground behind the building.
Fan reported from Beijing. Correspondent Jill Drew in Dujiangyan contributed to this report.
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