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Survivors tell of panic, fear and grief
(Xinhua)
Updated: 2010-04-14 21:45
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YUSHU, Qinghai - Tezin Drolma felt the floor waving when she was about to leave her home in northwest China for work on Wednesday morning.
"My first instinct told me it was an earthquake," Tezin Drolma told Xinhua in Gyegu Town near the epicenter in the Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture of Yushu, southern Qinghai Province.
The quake rattled things on the table, and Tezin Drolma dashed back to the bedroom and carried her 2-year-old son, who was sleeping, out of the house.
"I did not even put any clothes on him," she said.
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Her family of five fled the two-storey house.
"I don't know what happened to the house as I have not returned home yet," she said. "Most of the earth and wood structured houses toppled.
"I saw bodies on the road," she recalled.
Another resident named Lungme and five members of her family were buried under the rubble of her home. "It was all so sudden. I had no time to react," she said.
She and four family members were dug out by her neighbors, Lungme said, "but my mother died."
"Eight people in one of my neighbor's family were all buried. They were all dead when they were found," she said.
A student at the Yushu Vocational School, where at least one third of the school buildings collapsed, said, "I know there were several students in the teaching building. Several bodies were found in the ruins, but the casualties are not known yet."
About 400 people have died and 10,000 were injured after the 7.1-magnitude quake hit the Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture of Yushu, which lies on the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau at an altitude above 4,000 meters.
The quake also killed five people and injured one in neighboring Shiqu County, in the Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture of Garze, Sichuan Province.
