China rescuers seek survivors in hard-hit town

On Friday, amid the little that is left of the town of Beichuan, the answers came in faint taps on concrete or muffled cries.

In response to one such muffled call, five volunteers dug with their hands and shovels for more than four hours, freeing a middle-aged woman from a crumpled apartment building.

The woman, who was too weak to speak, was followed by another -and another. In all, 33 people were found, the government said, and they were rushed away on stretchers -bruised, bleeding and covered in dust -about 100 hours after the massive quake struck central China.

The rescues brought momentary relief to the remote mountain town that collapsed on itself. Many of those left in Beichuan or those who came back to search for lost family have steeled themselves for the deaths of their loved ones.

"I've called her countless times, but there's no answer. Now the phone is dead," said Zhang Mingfeng, who traveled from the nearby city of Jiangyou to look for her 39-year-old sister who was working at Beichuan's Commerce Bureau when Monday's quake struck. The office is now a heap of brick and twisted metal, speckled by books and green metal filing cabinets.

"My cousins and I have spent the last few days crying," said Zhang, her eyes tearing as she surveyed the ruins. "The last time we saw her was Sunday, when we had lunch together. It was family time."

Beichuan, set deep in a verdant valley 100 miles north of Sichuan's provincial capital of Chengdu, had a population of about 30,000 before the quake. It is surrounded by small coal and gold mines and tea plantations. Rare pandas live in its forest-clad hills.

Among the hardest hit by the quake, Beichuan now looks like a pile of matchsticks. Mounds of debris stand seven stories high, with smoke plumes rising from some of the wreckage. Landslides raked gigantic gashes in the mountainsides. Roads leading into the county buckled like freeway off-ramps leading to nowhere, isolating its three larger towns and 13 hamlets and most of its 160,000 people. Some estimates by state media put the death toll for the county at 7,000. Xinhua said 3,000 were killed in the town of Beichuan alone.

On Friday, Beichuan was abuzz with activity as soldiers, police and emergency workers flooded into the disaster zone. Sirens wailed, heavy machinery whined and the acrid air smelled of smoke, rotting food and chemicals.