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Schools Fell While Other Buildings Held
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Xinyin's mother, Zhang Xuemei, was the first parent to reach the school. She recalled spotting her daughter's teacher and three others standing in front of the debris.
"Are all the students out?" she called out.
The teacher answered: "Only a few. Maybe five or six."
"My daughter?"
Pause. "She's still in there."
Zhang fainted, then woke up to chaos. Parents were crying and calling out their children's names, digging through concrete chunks with bare hands. Many were bleeding from cuts. Some teachers -- only two of them had been in the building when it fell -- joined in the search.
Just after 3 p.m., one hysterical mother located her 10-year-old daughter and pulled her out. She splashed water over her face. The girl was already dead.
For one family, a whole generation was wiped out. A sister and her two brothers each discovered they had lost a child.
Rescue workers found Xinyin just after 7 p.m. She was at the bottom of the stairs, about a yard from safety when the building caved in. There was so much debris that it took until 2:30 a.m. to free her. She had died instantly when a stone or other debris struck her neck, a doctor told the family. Sang Xingpeng was a few steps behind her, one of his legs in front of the other as if he was still running. He had suffocated to death.
A Town Divided
Nearly two decades ago, Xingpeng's mother, Liu Ying, was among the first to attend Fuxin.
Now 34, Liu said she remembers that soon after she and other students started at the school, the third floor started to develop cracks.
"I couldn't imagine that after so many years they wouldn't have fixed the problems and our kids would be dead in here," Liu said.
