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Death Toll Rising In China’s Quake

By Stefan J. Bos, Chief International Correspondent Worthy News

BEIJING (Worthy News) – The death toll from China’s worst earthquake in nine years rose to 131 early Wednesday, with some 1,000 people injured, officials said.

Rescuers searched through rubble in below-freezing conditions in a mountainous region of northwestern China, but hope was rapidly fading that many people could be pulled out alive.

The magnitude-6.2 earthquake struck just before midnight on Monday in Jishishan county near the border of Gansu and Qinghai provinces, according to authorities.

It destroyed or damaged more than 150,000 homes, according to state media.

The earthquake, followed by several strong aftershocks, caused mud and landslides and damaged power lines and other local infrastructure “to varying degrees,” officials said.

On Wednesday morning, authorities said the official death toll had risen to 131 in Gansu, with 782 injured, and 18 dead and 198 wounded in Qinghai.

Responders, including 1,500 firefighters, 1,500 police officers, 1,000 soldiers, and about 400 medics, continued to pull people from the rubble and treat the injured, witnesses said.

SCORES RESCUED

Some 78 people had been rescued in Gansu, but 20 people were still missing from two villages in Minhe county, where a mudslide swept through, half-burying many buildings in brown silt.

Search and rescue operations and efforts to resettle residents continued as state media footage showed bulldozers removing thick mud.

The quake devastated families. In the predawn darkness, Ma Lianqiang stood next to the body of his deceased wife, wrapped in blankets in a tent-like temporary shelter lit by a single overhead light, reporters witnessed.

His wife was hit and buried by debris in her mother’s house, where she had gone to stay because she was ill.

Ma and other extended family members survived despite extensive damage to their house in Yangwa, a village in Gansu province.

His father pulled Ma’s son, whose back was injured, out of the rubble. Yet Ma was now grieving over his wife, one of many plunged into mourning following the devastating quake.

Authorities hope they will find survivors. But a days-long cold wave sweeping across most of China and the high-altitude area in China’s north-west reported temperatures as low as -16 Celsius (3.2 Fahrenheit) were hampering rescue efforts.