Rescue & Aid
Standing together, Caring for each other
By Wang Ru (China Daily)
Updated: 2010-04-17 08:55
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Rescue workers and local monks join forces to pull young survivor from collapsed building.
Waves of "hurrah" burst from rescue workers and local monks as a 13-year-old girl was pulled from the rubble in Yushu on Friday.
"A sniffer dog found the survivor first, and we confirmed it with the life detector," said Wang Zhiqiu, deputy head of the China International Search and Rescue Team that arrived on Wednesday.
Before finding the girl, the rescue team had dug three bodies from the debris of what had been a three-floor market in the town center.
Once she was found, a group of local monks from Gyegu temple joined the rescue team. They removed smaller rubble by hand and tied ropes on big chunks of concrete, pulling them away together. Two cranes removed the biggest slabs.
At 13:50 pm, Tsertra Lhamo was pulled free with only a slight injury on her ankle.
About 85 percent of the residential houses have collapsed in Gyegu, the administrative center of Yushu County and the epicenter in the 7.1-magnitude quake on Wednesday, which had claimed 1,144 lives by Friday, the final day of the "golden three-day rescue opportunity". From here on in, the chances of finding survivors quickly dims.
The local temperature swings 25 degrees between day and night, with an average 20 C during the day and dropping dramatically to minus 5 C at night.
This time of year the concentration of oxygen in the air is at a low point, and altitude sickness has affected many rescuers. Dry air, leading to dehydration, will also reduce the chances of survival. The streets smell of human excrement, raising concern of an epidemic. Police began to spray disinfectant on streets on Friday.
Some relief tents arrived in town Friday morning, but many people still lived on the street without protection. Many had caught colds and other respiratory illnesses.
Caring for others, however, was everywhere in the town. Ngawang Gyatso and 100 monks from Sichuan province brought trucks of food and clothes. Chu Weimin also brought truckloads of food and vegetables on Thursday.
The two had never met, but together they handed out instant noodles and soup at Gesar Square to the thousands of hungry people from early morning until nightfall.
"We give food to everyone, no matter if they are Tibetans, Han people or Muslims. We are people living on the same land," Ngawang Gyatso said, giving a bowl of hot noodles to an old woman.
Tsertra Shi, a 34-year-old Tibetan teacher, ran with 20 of his students out of the classroom.
"When the earthquake struck, I was thrown by the power of it, like a basketball," he said.
"There are many poor people in Gyegu. After more relief goods come, I hope the poor people receive them first. They have nothing now. I at least have a car," he said in tears.
