BEICHUAN, CHINA — The orange-suited emergency workers had just pulled someone out of the rubble alive Saturday when a chilling cry reverberated around the tilting high-rises, the toppled construction cranes and the market littered with bodies: The valley was about to flood.
In a panic, thousands of soldiers, earthquake survivors and aid workers raced headlong for the hills, some helping babies and the elderly negotiate a mountain of jagged debris. "Move it!" yelled one commander. "Don't worry about your equipment -- just get to higher ground," barked another.
Authorities issued the warning to evacuate Beichuan, fearing that water from a choked river might overrun this obliterated town near the epicenter of Monday's magnitude 7.9 quake. The official New China News Agency reported that a lake created by quake-triggered landslides "may burst its banks at any time."
"I don't want to die," one survivor cried out, kneeling in terror on a rubble pile, his head repeatedly touching the ground in prayer.
The government in Beijing has been playing down the threat of another disaster as it works overtime to reassure the public. But the warning Saturday underscored how jittery people's nerves still were, given aftershocks and the deadly risk that flooding in this mountainous area could pose.
The confirmed death toll Saturday rose to 28,881, Cabinet spokesman Guo Weimin said, with 10,600 people still reportedly missing in Sichuan.
Every so often, despite the odds, a survivor is found in the wreckage. The New China News Agency said early today that a man was found alive after being trapped for 139 hours -- more than five days -- in a collapsed hospital in Beichuan. Tang Xiong "was only slightly bruised," the agency said.
Two U.S. Air Force cargo planes were expected to arrive in Sichuan today from Hawaii and Alaska with tents, blankets, food and generators, the first aid flights from the U.S.
Hardly a building has been left untouched in Beichuan, which sits in a valley with steep mountains on both sides. All the police stations and prisons were destroyed; all six of the city's deputy mayors are missing or dead; and most of its 30,000 residents appear to have been buried or have fled.
Ten-story buildings teeter at odd angles, some supported by the debris from adjacent buildings, while a five-square-block area in the center of town is a massive field of rubble that has buried streets and other landmarks.
