Deadly Earthquake in China

People evacuate office buildings in Beijing after a powerful earthquake on Monday.

Chinese state media said Monday that 3,000 to
5,000 people have died in one county in Sichuan province alone from a
massive earthquake.
The official Xinhua News Agency said another 10,000 people were believed hurt in Beichuan county after the 7.8-magnitude quake.
Nearly
900 students were trapped after their school collapsed about 60 miles
from the epicenter. Photos showed heavy cranes trying to remove rubble
from the ruined school.
At
least five more schools in the province reportedly collapsed, burying
unknown numbers of elementary and middle school children.
The earthquake struck in the middle of the afternoon when classes and office towers were full.
The temblor was felt as far away as Pakistan, Vietnam and Thailand.

Xinhua
reporters in Juyuan township, about 60 miles from the epicenter, saw
buried teenagers struggling to break loose from underneath the rubble
of their three-story school building "while others were crying out for
help."
Two girls were quoted by Xinhua as saying they escaped because they had "run faster than others."

Communication networks disrupted
The
quake struck about 60 miles northwest of Chengdu at 2:28 p.m., the U.S.
Geological Survey said on its Web site. Calls into the city did not go
through as panicked residents quickly overloaded the telephone system.
"In
Chengdu, mobile telecommunication converters have experienced jams and
thousands of servers were out of service," said Sha Yuejia, deputy
chief executive officer of China Mobile.
Although
it was difficult to telephone Chengdu, an Israeli student, Ronen
Medzini, sent a text message to The Associated Press saying there were
power and water outages there. "Traffic jams, no running water, power outs,
everyone sitting in the streets, patients evacuated from hospitals
sitting outside and waiting," he said.
Xinhua
said an underground water pipe ruptured near the city's southern
railway station, flooding a main thoroughfare. Reporters saw buildings
with cracks in their walls but no collapses, Xinhua said.


'Never felt anything like this'
The
earthquake also rattled buildings in Beijing, some 930 miles to the
north, less than three months before the Chinese capital was expected
to be full of hundreds of thousands of foreign visitors for the Summer
Olympics.
Many
Beijing office towers were evacuated, including the building housing
the media offices for the organizers of the Olympics, which start in
August. .Injuries were also reported in Aba prefecture of Sichuan province,
where the local government said the quake cracked and collapsed
buildings and damaged mountain roads.
.The U.S. Geological Survey said the quake was
centered about 6 miles below the surface, and that there were several
smaller aftershocks.
In
Beijing, people ran screaming into the streets in other cities, where
many residents said they had never been in an earthquake. In Fuyang,
660 miles to the east, chandeliers in the lobby of the Buckingham
Palace Hotel swayed. "We've never felt anything like this our whole
lives," said a hotel employee surnamed Zhu.
Patients
at the Fuyang People's No. 1 Hospital were evacuated. An hour after the
quake, a half-dozen patients in blue-striped pajamas stood outside the
hospital. One was laying on a hospital bed in the parking lot.
Closer
to the epicenter in Chongqing, Lai Dequn was napping while her mother
watched TV on the 19th floor of a hotel. "I suddenly felt the bed
shaking and then realized it must be an earthquake," said the
42-year-old Lai. "So I just put on slippers and helped my mother down
to the ground floor."
In
Shanghai, skyscrapers swayed and most office occupants went rushing
into the streets. The airport in the provincial capital, Chengdu, was
closed and roads were clogged with traffic after the earthquake, state
television reported.
Rain was also predicted for the disaster area.


Prime Minister headed to epicenter
Chinese
President Hu Jintao ordered that the injured be quickly treated, Xinhua
reported. Premier Wen Jiabao was headed to the epicenter and troops
with China's People's Liberation Army were being dispatched to help
with disaster relief.
In Beijing, thousands of people evacuated or were ordered out of buildings.
"I've
lived in Taipei and California and I've been through quakes before.
This is the most I've ever felt," said James McGregor, a business
consultant who was inside the LG Towers in Beijing's business district.
"The floor was moving underneath me."
A magnitude 7.8 earthquake is considered a major event, capable of causing widespread damage and injuries in populated areas.
The
last serious earthquake in China was in 2003, when a 6.8-magnitude
quake killed 268 people in Bachu county in the west of Xinjiang.
China's
deadliest earthquake in modern history struck the northeastern city of
Tangshan on July 28, 1976, killing 240,000 people.


Hanoi, Bangkok feel quake
The U.S. Geological Survey described it as "a dangerous earthquake" given its proximity to densely populated areas.
"I
would say the best characterization at this point is that it's a
dangerous earthquake," said Bruce Presgrave, a geophysicist at the USGS
in Colorado. "The entire area is a densely populated part of China.
There are lots of people exposed to potentially damaging ground
shaking."
In the
Taiwanese capital of Taipei, 100 miles off the southeastern Chinese
coast, buildings swayed when the quake hit. There were no immediate
reports of injuries or damage.
The
quake was felt as far away as the Vietnamese capital of Hanoi, where
some people hurried out of swaying office buildings and into the
streets downtown. A building in the Thai capital of Bangkok also was
evacuated after the quake was felt there.