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HANWANG, China: Rescue efforts will never move fast
enough for mothers like Wen Huayoung, standing amid the wreckage of
this small hill town in southwestern Sichuan province.
Bodies are being pulled out of
the debris here at the rate of one every 20 minutes, and the number
of survivors is dwindling by the hour.
“Time is life,” China’s
Premier Wen Jiabao told rescuers near here, recognizing that time
was running out for thousands of people buried alive after the
region was devastated by the 7.9-magnitude earthquake on Monday that
has killed more than 20,000 people, according to sources of Agence
France-Presse.
Chinese figures were much lower,
according to reports by the state-run Xinhua news agency. It
reported that earthquake death toll across China rose to 14,866 by 2
p.m. Wednesday, from about 12,000 on Tuesday.
Some 14,463 were dead in Sichuan
province, 280 in Gansu province, 106 in Shaanxi province, 14 in
Chongqing municipality, two in Henan province and one in Yunnan
province, Xinhua reported.
Mounting grief
Mounting grief is giving way to
anger for some fathers and mothers like Wen, many of whom have been
forced by family planning laws to have just one child.
“I just don’t understand why
they’re not moving fast enough,” said Wen, 39, as she sat
outside the demolished high school waiting for news of her
18-year-old daughter.
“When dinner comes, they
[rescue workers] all stop working and run to get food. Too many are
just standing there, not moving.”
At one collapsed factory, a maker
of turbines where one-fifth of the 5,000 workers are still believed
to be buried under rubble, one determined woman tried to break
through police lines to dig out the rubble with her bare hands.
--AFP With Xinhua
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