China quake rescuers face tough going

At Zhu Renmin Hospital in Mianzhu, where thousands of dead and severely injured people filled a parking lot, police and government workers arrived early in the day to help move patients to the provincial capital, Chengdu, and hospitals elsewhere in the area.

As darkness fell along with steady rain in a city without power, doctors in the parking lot raced to move hospital beds into tents to care for patients huddled in the cold. Surgical gloves, used needles and bedpans littered the ground, along with blood-stained mattresses and adult diapers.

"I've never seen so many people dead or injured," said Luo Ping, a pediatric nurse.

The number of deaths from the magnitude 7.9 quake a day earlier had risen to more than 12,000 in central China's hard-hit Sichuan province, where the quake was centered 60 miles northwest of Chengdu, state media said.

Officials said soldiers and police officers were struggling to reach at least 18,000 people buried in and around Mianyang, many of them children trapped in the debris of collapsed schools.

Thousands more were believed trapped or missing elsewhere. Throughout the region, roads were closed by landslides, and storms impeded delivery of supplies as the need for medicine and doctors intensified. Tens of thousands spent their days and nights outside.

Rescuers reached hard-hit Beichuan on Tuesday. TV footage showed soldiers in green camouflage lifting large chunks of concrete and talking to students who remained under the rubble.

"How many of you are there?" a rescuer asked.

"About 30," a chorus of young voices answered back.

Aftershocks and government warnings about safety kept people out of buildings. The official New China News Agency said 80% of Beichuan's structures had collapsed -- whole swaths of the city.

The quake struck Monday afternoon and was felt across much of China. It was the nation's worst earthquake since 1976, when more than 240,000 people died.

Rescue workers, including thousands of Chinese troops armed with shovels, made their way through mud and landslides to reach the remote epicenter in mountainous Sichuan province.