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CHENGDU, China (Reuters) - Nearly 10,000 people were killed by the earthquake that hammered southwest China, officials said on Tuesday as rescuers struggled to reach the worst-hit areas, where many more may have died.

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Rescuers worked frantically through the night, pulling bodies from schools, homes, factories and hospitals that were demolished by the 7.8 magnitude quake, which rippled from a mountainous area of Sichuan province across much of China on Monday afternoon.

 

The toll from China's worst earthquake for over three decades appeared sure to climb as troops struggled on foot to reach the worst-hit area, Wenchuan, a hilly county of 112,000 people 100 km (62 miles) from Sichuan's provincial capital, Chengdu.

 

About 900 teenagers were buried under a collapsed three-storey school building in the Sichuan city of Dujiangyan.

 

Premier Wen Jiabao, who rushed there, bowed three times in grief before some of the 50 bodies already pulled out, Xinhua news agency reported.

 

"Not one minute can be wasted," Wen said, state television showed. "One minute, one second could mean a child's life."

 

At a second school in Dujiangyan, fewer than 100 of 420 students survived, Xinhua reported.

 

China's Communist Party leadership announced that coping with the devastating quake, and ensuring that it did not threaten social stability, was now the government's top priority.

 

"Time is life," said an official announcement from the Communist Party Standing Committee, according to the Xinhua news agency. "Make fighting the earthquake and rescue work the current top task."

 

Officials must speed food, water, medicine and other necessities to quake-stricken areas, the meeting ordered, adding that officials must keep a grip on social stability.

 

"Strengthen positive guidance of opinion," the meeting urged, warning against the spread of rumors.

 

The Sichuan quake was the worst to hit China since the 1976 Tangshan tremor in northeastern China where up to 300,000 died. Then, unlike now, the Communist Party kept a tight lid on information about the extent of the disaster.

 

SEVERED ROADS, RAIL LINES

 

In Chengdu, many residents slept outside or in cars on Monday night, fearing more tremors in the city where at least 45 people died and 600 were injured.

 

The government has rushed troops and medical teams to dig for survivors and treat the injured. But severed roads and rail lines blocked the way to Wenchuan, and local officials described crumpled houses, landslides and scenes of desperation.

 

"We are in urgent need of tents, food, medicine and satellite communications equipment," the Communist Party chief of Wenchuan, Wang Bin said, according to Xinhua.

 

Most farmers' homes in two townships had collapsed and there was no word from the three townships nearest the epicenter, which have a population of 24,000, the report added. So far Wenchuan has reported 15 dead, a number likely to rise steeply.

 

More than 7,000 may have died in Sichuan's Beichuan Qiang Autonomous County, where 80 percent of the buildings were destroyed, Sichuan television said. Beichuan has a population of 161,000, meaning about one in 10 there were killed or injured.

 

"Even if it means walking in, we must enter the worst-hit areas as quickly as possible," Wen said, according to Xinhua.

 

But a paramilitary officer marching with a hundred troops towards Wenchuan described a devastated landscape that is likely to yield many dead and to frustrate rescuers.

 

"I have seen many collapsed civilian houses and the rocks dropped from mountains on the roadside are everywhere," said the People's Armed Police officer Liu Zaiyuan, according to Xinhua.

 

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That's tragic, just like in Myranmar. If those were the initial death tolls I wonder what it will be like in a few days? How sad, I hope they can rescue as many people as possible.

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Up to 12,000 now and probably rise a lot more.

 

Very sad. At least it is good to see that the govt is actually doing a lot about it.

 

Where's God when you need him?

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Medicin Sans Frontieres and many other charitable organizations are already on the ground.

 

I have made a donation to them as that is the only way I can help out at the moment.

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From the images on TV, the destruction looks overwhelming. As Soubs says, the number of deaths is going to be a lot higher than 12,000. I guess that is the end of the human rights issue for the olympics. No one is going to want to be seen giving the Chinese government a hard time when the country has suffered such a clamity.

 

Watching this stuff makes one realise just how much more vulnerable you become once you have children of your own. It would be terrifying trying to keep your little ones safe in such circumstances.

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Don't know yet Soubs. Still trying to extract myself from the Bear Stearns train smash. Maybe Singapore or Tokyo, depending - definitely getting out of HK though, the pollution is just too bad to put up with any longer. Had a close look at Dubai the other day looks ok but the numbers didn't stack up, not for a place where it is too hot to go outside for half of the year.

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Yeah I was thinking you might. Extraction that is.

 

If I was to relocate, I'd prob give Sapporo a try. But right now, have to give the nipper a proper education with a foundation in Chinese and splashes of English, then send him to ivy or oxbridge. Fingers crossed.

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having just seen more live pictures from TV, it's definitely will be more.

 

First batch of aid approved, $350M and lots more to follow. We help ourselves as much as we can.

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China's shoddy adherence building standards have been disastrously exposed as woefully inadequate. no point having codes and standards if no one fellows them. Chinas is the land of the Aneha's

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SG you're probably right there but to be fair, the earth quake peeps are saying that with a 7.8 quake occurring only 10 km beneath the surface, even high quality buildings would suffer pretty severe damage.

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 Originally Posted By: thursday.


But right now, have to give the nipper a proper education with a foundation in Chinese and splashes of English


Can't you do that in Sing or some place else (Vancouver perhaps?) where the air isn't toxic?
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 Originally Posted By: thursday.
Nah, I prefer to be home than a gaijin.

Totally agree with you on this one, Thursday. But if it gets any whose we will soon have to change that to:
I prefer to be alive than dead.
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Magnitude 7.8 would cause a lot of damage regardless of building standards, but it certainly is an indictment that all those schools fell down. I'll bet they weren't built to standard.

 

I'm really sorry about the pollution HK people. When I was last there about 20 years ago, it used to give me terrible hay fever. God knows what it's like now, but there's no way I could live there.

 

Rag-Doll, Singapore isn't a very exciting city (mumble mumble).

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having a school in the village is a gift from the heavens anyway. Villagers don't care about building standards as long as they have a school.

 

In Sichuan and indeed many many places in China, the kids need to get up at the crack of dawn to fetch water from wells miles away, get their chores done, before hiking miles and miles to school barefoot. And those are the lucky ones who have schools to go to.

 

So it's little wonder that there are hundreds of millions of migrant workers who are away from their family 360 days a year who scrimp and save to send every penny possible home so that their kids could at least eat.

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Soubs/Thurs: Singapore gets a bad rap for being boring, perhaps with some justification but I'm not too bothered. I have twin 14mth toddlers and a 3 yr old so right now, a crazy weekend for us is a couple of hours at the local pool. It's going to be an easier place to live with young kids than TY and will have better air. I'd love to be back in TY and take the girls up to the snow during the winter - maybe even buy a shack up at Hakuba and commute....ah a dream come true! But right now I'm the only snow lover in a family of 5 and well, a man has to provide for his family and the gravy train I'm on right now will soon come to a screeching halt.

 

Another big plus for Singapore is that I will be able to run outside on flat ground, something I haven't really been able to do in the 3 yrs I've been in HK.

 

 

Oh, and another plus about Singapore is that its distance from HK precludes any possibility of re-visiting HK Disney Land...

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 Originally Posted By: Rag-Doll
I'd love to be back in TY and take the girls up to the snow during the winter - maybe even buy a shack up at Hakuba and commute....ah a dream come true!


Here I lie with my four daughters.
Died from drinking Cheltenham waters.
If I'd stuck with Epsom Salts,
I wouldn't be lying in these here vaults.

You'd better get an apartment with four bathrooms ;\)
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Where ever it happened it would cause destruction - any city in the world would be devestated - that is a huge quake. And I feel so sorry for the people. So many dead and missing, and so many others - the lucky ones - left homeless, no roof over thier heads at all.

 

And how many 'aftershocks' are they having to endure? Each is strong enough to be an earthquake in it's own right - that can't be helping matters.

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 Originally Posted By: tsondaboy
Very few buildings can withstand a M 7.9 earthquake, not even in Japan.

indeed, especially if they have no re-bar in them, some of the footage I have has a disturbing lack of rebar protruding for the rubble, 7 stories buildings that were absolutely smashed to smithereens - a pile of rubble about 2 meters high?
A properly reinforced building may not have been able to withstand that 7.8 quake(it got revised) but it would have given more chances for survival - more pockets of space in that rubble. 7 stories down to 2 metres? how many survival pockets in that? sweet F.A.

Those poor people had no chance in hell what so ever. They will find very few survivors in situations like that.

Also those poor Burmese people, what shocking timing to have two major disasters, the focus will be shifting away from Burma who seriously need the all help they can get. Lots of losers, no winners.
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nobody is prioritising who needs help.

 

Notice that the Chinese are helping themselves.

 

So too are those in Myanmar but perhaps the media would like to focus on areas other than self relief.

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