Grief and rescue after SW China quake

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A candlelight vigil was held early Wednesday morning as the body of 58-year-old Dao Qiongfen lay in a coffin.

Several hours before, the woman, the sole victim so far in a 6.6-magnitude quake that jolted southwest China's Yunnan Province at 9:49 p.m. on Tuesday, was still fast asleep.

"When it happened, I had been sleeping for half an hour already," said Qiongfen's grieving husband, Dao Wenguang, from Mangla Village of Yongping Town, five kilometers away from the epicenter.

Feeling the tremor, Dao Wenguang and their children soon fled the house. "But I didn't see her, and there was no reply when we called her name," the man said.

Dao Qiongfen was later found under a collapsed wall, unable to breathe and her waist broken.

As of 11 a.m. Wednesday, about 13 hours after the earthquake in Jinggu County, Pu'er, at least one person was dead and 324 others were injured, including eight in critical condition.

A total of 124,600 people from five counties and districts were affected, and some 58,980 people were evacuated. The quake also toppled 6,988 buildings and damaged 13,842 more.

In Mangla Village, where many villagers, like Dao, are of the Dai ethnic minority group, a Xinhua reporter saw cracks on buildings. Some adobe walls had collapsed, and broken bricks and tiles were scattered in the streets.

Villagers spent the night outside, and dozens of tents were pitched.

In nearby Mangfei Village, people gathered on a basketball court. They sat around a bonfire during the cold night.

According to Liu Wei, most of the wounded in his village suffered head and shoulder injuries.

Second quake

It was the second strong quake to hit the province in a little over two months. A 6.5-magnitude quake with a depth of 12 kilometers struck Ludian County on August 3, killing at least 615 people.

Although the focal depth of Tuesday's quake was relatively shallow at five kilometers and the quake occurred when many were in bed, it appears to have caused fewer casualties than the August quake so far.

Wang Bin, vice head of the Yunnan provincial seismological bureau, said many buildings in the area featured wooden mortise riveting structures, making them relatively quake-proof.

"In Jinggu, nearly 20,000 out of 60,000 rural households have improved the quality of their houses to meet the standard for shock-resistance," said Wang Tianshou, head of the housing and urban-rural development bureau in the county.

The lower intensity of the quake, lower population density in the quake-hit zone, and concentration of residences in flatter, less mountainous areas also led to fewer casualties.

Li Chunguang, head of the science and technology department of the bureau, said the two quakes happened along different seismic belts and had no direct connections.

Li said the province has entered a seismically active period, but further study is needed to predict whether there will be major earthquakes in the near future.

Rescue

Traffic remained open following the quake, and rescuers are racing to search for the missing and save the injured.

The provincial health and family planning commission in Yunnan has so far sent eight rescue teams with nearly 900 people to the quake zone. As doctors help in local hospitals, other health experts will work to prevent the spread of disease after the disaster.

Soldiers and armed police officers are delivering relief supplies to the quake zone. The civil affairs department of Yunnan has sent 11,000 tents, 11,000 blankets and 11,000 overcoats to Jinggu.

Provincial, city and county civil affairs authorities have earmarked a total of 28 million yuan (4.56 million U.S. dollars) to the quake-hit area for quake relief, according to the provincial civil affairs department.

Schools were suspended in the county's 100 schools on Wednesday. Chen Deliang, head of the county's education bureau, said school will not resume until inspectors confirm buildings and nearby surroundings of the schools are safe.

At Qianying Village, Yongping Township, villagers were pitching tents and cooking together. Some villagers made use of plastic vegetable greenhouses as makeshift living spaces.

"We can help set up tents so that professional quake relief personnel have more time for other relief work," said villager Xie Kaiping.

The quake also left two reservoirs with cracks, forcing more than 500 residents to evacuate. One of them, Changhai Reservoir, which currently holds 1.18 million cubic meters of water, may pose a danger because of an 80-meter-long crack.

Song Yun, an armed police officer participating in the disaster relief, said armed police have mobilized 18 machines, including excavators, to dig a sluice channel to discharge water in the reservoir. They are expected to be in place by 8 a.m. Thursday.