Quake survivors in hardscrabble existence

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LIVING IN FEAR: Every day, survivors hollow-eyed from trauma and lack of sleep relive the terror of the quake that shattered their world, as aftershocks -sometimes four or five a day -rumble beneath them.

"We have not dared to close our eyes. We feel the ground shake everyday and we worry about landslides," said Pan Guihui, a 35-year-old farmer who fled her destroyed mountain village with her family. They huddled with her on a roadside wondering what do next.

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THE SOUND OF DISASTER: The noise is relentless: Emergency workers in bright orange jumpsuits shout to each other as they scramble over a landscape of broken concrete looking for survivors or pulling out bodies. Anguished relatives stand before piles of rubble calling out the names of loved ones who may be buried somewhere inside. Ambulances and police cars with sirens wailing rush along, and the diesel engines of backhoes roar as they pick at the destruction, bucket by bucket. Everywhere, broken glass crunches underfoot.

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SHELTER: Thousands of people are camped out in the streets, sheltering under plastic sheets between trees or pieces of rubble. City residents whose homes collapsed mingle with refugees flooding in from ruined mountain villages. In one such town, Yingxiu, some people who left scribbled notes on pieces of paper and poked them onto the branches of a tree bare of leaves -messages left for loved ones who might come looking for them.

In a public park in Mianyang, 300 people crowd into tents made from plastic sheets and wooden poles, and a nearby sports arena has become a relief camp. In the second-floor gym, people lie resting in boxing rings and on exercise equipment, watched over by images of muscle-flexing bodybuilders in posters plastered on the walls. The toilets are overcrowded and messy.

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