Chinese county grieves as chances of survival fade
0 
More than 40 hours after his mother's home was obliterated by a massive mudslide, Xu Tenphel still refuses to leave the rubble.
"I'll stay here until her body is found," says Xu, 45.
Xu, a Tibetan, hopes to take his mother's body home for cremation in strict conformity with Tibetan funeral custom.
After the mudslide flattened Zhouqu County in Gannan Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture, Gansu Province, early Sunday, Xu traveled nearly 20 kilometers from his home village of Legwa to search for his mother.
The old woman's home in Beijie Village near the county seat, however, had disappeared, and Xu was certain she was buried in the rubble.
Rescuers -- including many People's Liberation Army soldiers and armed police officers who were involved in the rescue efforts after the devastating Wenchuan earthquake in May 2008 -- continued to search the debris Monday with life detectors and sniffer dogs for signs of life.
Xu and at least 40 Tibetan villagers from Legwa also joined the search, encouraged by Monday morning's rescue of a 74-year-old woman in neighboring Dongjie Village.
"Nearly every family has sent a young man to join the rescue," said Guo Tsering, 57, whose wife is missing.
Women in Tibetan dress took food and water to the rescuers and said silent prayers for the victims while wiping tears from their eyes time to time.
Rescue work was in full swing Monday but the results were almost always despairing. In Beijie Village alone, at least 25 bodies were retrieved Monday morning.
"We used 40 packs of disinfectant within three hours," said Yang Yuqiong, a doctor with a local clinic. "We encouraged people to cremate the bodies of their deceased family members as soon as possible but many people want to keep the old custom of burying."
Yang and her colleagues are worried about disease in the devastated area where Monday's ground temperature reached 35 degrees Celsius.
In Yueyuan Village -- meaning "Full Moon Village" -- about 90 percent of its 500 residents from 90 families died in the rain-triggered disaster, said Fang Jianjun, deputy head of Chengguan Township Government.
Torrential rain Saturday night prompted an avalanche of sludge and debris to crash down on Zhouqu County, ripping houses off their foundations and tearing six-story apartment buildings in half.
Yueyuan village, which sits at the foot of craggy mountains, was reduced to a mess of yellow slush and debris with not a single structure left standing.
"It was not raining very heavily in the county seat Saturday night. We didn't know that torrents were crashing down from the mountains," said He Xinchao, a survivor. "Before I realized what was happening, the house was gone."
His 11-member family was reduced to two. "Just me and my son," he said.
Many survivors sat helplessly on the ground, watching the rescuers' work and praying for miracles. Some desperately dug with their bare hands.
Some rescuers claimed they detected signs of life - cell phone rings and occasional faint cries for help.
By Sunday night, 127 were confirmed dead and 88 were injured. An estimated 1,294 people are missing.
The local government said at least 307 homes were destroyed.
Message of love
Two girls stood near a shelter for survivors and handed out cups of spring water to anyone passing by.
"There's no drinking water around, so we carried water from the mountains," said Yan Xiyun, the elder girl.
Yan, 13, and her friend, Wang Yongxia, 8, carried the pails of spring water from the mountains for least 30 minutes. They had been on such water-fetching trips at least five times since Sunday night.
Not everyone accepted their offer -- some were too busy while others were too much immersed in their grief. "But it's very touching to see these young girls' gesture of love and care," said a police officer who was helping with the rescue work.
Though cash donations and relief supplies poured into the area Monday, the county was still in dire need of water and food as all roads are submerged under sludge and mud, making it impossible for vehicles to reach the area. The first food store that reopened after the disaster was a Muslim eatery and it offered pancakes to rescuers for free.
"We owe them a lot and this is the only thing I can do to repay their kindness," said the store-keeper, who gave only his family name as Han.
An act of god?
At a press conference Monday afternoon, Minister of Land and Resources Xu Shaoshi enumerated several causes for Sunday's disaster: the county's loose, weathered terrain that is prone to landslides and other disasters; the massive earthquake of 2008 that shook the mountains around Zhouqu; the sustained drought and soil erosion in the region since last winter; and the torrential rain that lasted more than 40 minutes and deposited at least 90 millimeters of rain Saturday night.
When an 8.0-magnitude earthquake struck Wenchuan County in neighboring Sichuan Province in May 2008, Zhouqu County reported 15 deaths and 59 injuries. The quake also increased the risk for geological disasters in the county.
In fact, three years before the quake, in 2005, warnings about geological disasters, including "flash floods, landslides and mudslides that could endanger the locals' lives," appeared in a newspaper in the provincial capital, Lanzhou.
The five-year-old warnings reappeared on a website after the accident.
"Dams were built to block the two traditional passageways of floods and mudslides - the Bailong River valley," said Yang Fan, a resident in Zhouqu County. "But this time, the disaster changed route and swept through the populated areas."
Zhouqu County, about 650 km from Lanzhou, sits in the Bailong River Valley and is hemmed in by rocky mountains on both sides.
