CHENGDU, CHINA — With the death toll still rising in the Sichuan earthquake, China disclosed that at least four million apartments and homes had been damaged or destroyed in the massive quake, leaving almost five million people homeless.
Strong aftershocks were continuing to rattle the disaster zone Friday, knocking out phone lines and triggering landslides that blocked roads and buried a number of vehicles on a road leading to the epicentre.
The biggest aftershock Friday had a 5.5 magnitude, causing buildings to sway in the city of Chengdu, about 80 kilometres from the quake-damaged region.
About 10 survivors, including a young child and a 23-year-old nurse, were rescued alive Friday after four days in the rubble. Rescue workers could hear weak cries from a few other people in the wreckage. But hope was fading for most of those who were still trapped in the collapsed buildings.
A resident of Beichuan walks away from the ruins Thursday. Villages nearby are short of food, water and medicine. (Jason Lee/Reuters)
The official death toll rose to about 22,000 Friday, an increase of more than 3,000 from the day earlier. The final toll is expected to climb to 50,000 or more. A further 159,000 have been injured.
China has mounted a huge relief effort, with 135,000 soldiers, police and medical staff, along with helicopters that are dropping packages of food and clothing to remote regions that still cannot be reached by road.
Water shortages have become “extremely serious” in Sichuan province, according to Chinese Housing Minister Jiang Weixin. There is no running water in 20 counties and cities in the disaster area, he said.
China's Housing Ministry announced Friday that it is launching an investigation into the collapse of many school buildings in the quake. It vowed to punish anyone responsible for shoddy construction.
Public controversy is still raging in China over the collapse of the school buildings, which killed thousands of children. Nearly 7,000 classrooms were destroyed in the collapsed schools, according to new estimates. Many people believe the schools were shoddily constructed as a result of government corruption. In some cases, the schools collapsed while all other nearby buildings were intact.
Meanwhile, for the first time in its history, the Chinese government officially accepted the help of foreign rescue workers, many of whom have specialized technology and experience in rescuing people from collapsed buildings. A 31-member team from Japan arrived in the quake zone Friday, with special life-detection equipment and sniffer dogs. But the government waited four days before accepting the offer, too late for the vast majority of those who were trapped in the rubble.
Only four countries – Japan, South Korea, Singapore and Russia – were permitted to send their rescue teams to China. An offer of assistance from the Canadian government, which wanted to send the Disaster Assistance Response Team (DART), was apparently not accepted by the Chinese authorities.
A 10-member team of rescue specialists from a British relief agency, who had arrived in Hong Kong on Wednesday, were unable to get permission from the Chinese government to travel to Sichuan Friday.
Chinese Prime Minister Wen Jiabao has been in the earthquake zone since Monday, visiting different sites and consoling the victims and survivors. Friday, he was joined by President Hu Jintao, who told survivors that “we feel your anguish.”
In the badly hit city of Mianyang Friday, Mr. Hu said the relief work has entered its most crucial phase. “The challenge is still severe, the task is still arduous and the time is pressing,” he said, according to the state-owned Xinhua news agency.
About 20,000 earthquake survivors have taken shelter in a sports stadium in Mianyang. Some are sleeping on ping-pong table tops, treadmills and the floors of boxing rings. Volunteers are providing food, medicine and clothing to the survivors.
The stadium itself was slightly damaged in the earthquake. Inside, several volunteers are painstakingly trying to record the names of the survivors so that their relatives can find them.
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