China quake survivors seek shelter

Death toll may climb as high as 50,000 ; Aiding living to be bigger job

A rescuer collected backpacks from a collapsed school in Shifang, located in Sichuan Province in southwest China. Officials say more than 50,000 people probably died in the earthquake. (STR/AFP/Getty Images)

MIANYANG, China - Thousands of stunned peasants streamed out of devastated mountain villages in search of food and shelter yesterday, transformed into homeless refugees by the violent earthquake that ravaged central China on Monday.

More than 20,000 farmers and small-town shopkeepers, along with children and elderly, filled up the Jiu Zhou Sports Stadium in Mianyang, the regional capital about 60 miles northeast of Chengdu. Officials said more were arriving by the hour as military rescue teams reopened roads and homeless families made their way out of the badly damaged Beichuan County hills just northeast of the epicenter.

Much of the initial efforts following the 7.9 magnitude quake have been to rescue those trapped in the aftermath and to deal with the dead. More than 19,500 people have been killed, and officials believe more than 26,000 people are still buried in the rubble. It is estimated that the death toll could reach 50,000. But aiding the survivors might prove an even larger task.

One arrival, a woman with hair matted by dust and dark bruises staining her cheeks, was led into the stadium by a nurse. The woman looked straight ahead but seemed to see nothing, as if she were sleepwalking. She limped on her left leg, and her pants were caked with the yellow dust of debris from a fallen building.

Nearby, families pushed on toward the main steps, carrying clothes in plastic bags and looking for a place to sit down. Their faces were also vacant, strained from lack of sleep and the shock of what they had endured over the past 72 hours.

Atop the steps, Jia Sushi, 26, sat alone, quietly weeping and looking over the teeming entranceway. She lost her husband soon after they arrived Wednesday from Beidisi Village, she said, and she had no idea where to begin looking among the thousands of people milling about before her.

The confusion in the stadium, jammed with people sitting on the ground and surrounded by tents and tarps strung from trees, suggested the formidable dimensions of the challenge facing the Chinese government even after large-scale rescue operations are abandoned in the quake zone. Not only do the homeless peasants have to be cared for in short-term refugee centers, an official said but they also will have to get long-term help in rebuilding their homes, schools, and stores if the area is ever to return to its traditional agriculture-based prosperity.

Dealing with the fallout from Monday's tremor seemed likely to become a large part of the Communist Party's mission in the coming months, casting a shadow over its ambition of staging a joyful Olympic Games in Beijing in August and testing the leadership of President Hu Jintao, Premier Wen Jiabao, and the party's other key figures.

The government estimated that about 10 million people across half a dozen provinces were directly affected by the earthquake, with Sichuan the hardest hit, according to the official New China News Agency.

Beichuan County, which has a population of more than 160,000, mostly farmers, lost 80 percent of its houses, officials told the New China News Agency. Beichuan city, its main center 30 miles northwest of here, was largely reduced to rubble, with bodies still laid out in the streets.

"The whole county has been destroyed," Gu Qinhui, a regional director of the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies, told reporters in Beijing after a visit to Beichuan.