A powerful earthquake devastated China, killing about 10,000 people,
toppling thousands of homes, factories, offices and schools.
It was China’s worst
natural disaster in 32 years. It ravaged the mountainous region outside Chengdu, capital of Sichuan Province,
destroying 80 percent of structures in some of the towns and small cities near
its epicenter, Chinese officials said. The Chinese authorities sent more than
50,000 troops to the region to help in the disaster recovery.
The 7.9-magnitude quake, as was estimated preliminarily,
emptied office buildings in Beijing.
Thousands of people spent the night on streets. They were advised to stay out
of the buildings which were in danger of collapse.
“We can't get to sleep. We're afraid of the earthquake.
We're afraid of all the shaking,” said 52-year-old factory worker Huang Ju, who
took her ailing, elderly mother out of the Jinjiang District People's Hospital,
according to the Associated Press.
At least two large schools, each with nearly 1,000 students,
were damaged. Rescuers tried to save wounded students at Juyuan
Middle School in Juyuan Township of
Dujiangyan City, about 100 kilometers from the epicenter in Wenchuan county of
southwest China's Sichuan province. Nearly
900 students here were feared buried when a high school building collapsed in
the earthquake, official Xinhua news agency said. Buried teenagers struggled to
break free from the rubble in Juyuan, "while others were crying out for
help," Xinhua said. Families waited in the rain near the wreckage as
rescuers wrote the names of the dead on a blackboard.
Nearly 10,000 people died in central China’s Sichuan
province and 300 others in three others provinces and the city of Chongquing.
