Gou Yiguo can't remember how many lives he saved from the earthquake rubble that used to be Beichuan Middle School.

"I pulled out a lot of students, alive or dead, from the rubble," said the P.E. teacher in a telephone interview with Xinhua. "I just kept pulling and pulling. That was horrible."

Gou, who was selected early this year as the only Olympic torchbearer from Beichuan County of Mianyang City, one of the worst-hit areas of the deadly May 12 earthquake, recounted the horror between sobs.

A strong wave threw the 33-year-old Gou and his wife out of the open door of their first-floor flat in Beichuan Middle School when the 8.0-magnitude earthquake struck southwest China's Sichuan Province.

"I saw the six-story school building crumple like a house of cards and I heard screams and cries for help," Gou recalled. "My students were all there. I taught eight sophomore classes. My basketball team and athletics team were all there.

"I ran to the leveled building and shouted: 'I'm teacher Gou. Don't panic, children. I will get you out.'"

Gou pulled students from the rubble with his bare hands until the rescue team arrived one hour later.

"My wife later grabbed me to check on my son in a nearby kindergarten. When I got there, my poor 3-year-old son had stopped breathing," Guo choked on the phone.

Afterwards, he returned to the flattened school to keep the trapped kids calm until rescuers arrived.

Many of the half-buried students did not make it.

The death toll from China's most deadly earthquake in decades hit 68,1516 by yesterday.

Guo's sister's family of three were killed in a mudslide caused by the quake but his parents were unhurt.