Disaster Victims

Everywhere you turned Wednesday, there was more bad news: The official death toll from China's earthquake climbed to nearly 15,000, with thousands still missing; 391 dams were damaged; and in Mianyang county, 3,600 passengers were trapped in trains, and 120 coal miners lost underground. Although survivors at the epicenter of the magnitude 7.9 earthquake began receiving some aid, tens of thousands of others were in dire straits, lacking food, water and shelter.

As health concerns intensified and aid poured in from across China and the world, Beijing on Sunday began three days of mourning to commemorate the likely 50,000 deaths from the massive earthquake in Sichuan province. The toll continued to rise, with a report today by the official New China News Agency that more than 200 relief workers had been buried by mud. Details were not immediately available. This afternoon, exactly one week after the magnitude 7.

Deng Rufu sits on a rock watching the exodus of his people from their ravaged homeland. A young Qiang man with a sweating brow carries his 82-year-old grandmother on a wooden contraption strapped to his back. Another elderly woman climbs painfully with a hand-carved walking stick. A little girl in pink sneakers lags behind the rest. "At this point, we don't know how many we've lost," Deng said as he tapped on one of the few items he'd salvaged, a traditional sheepskin drum.

Among the hundreds of cyclone survivors who staggered through the doors of a monastery here, staring straight ahead and too traumatized to even blink, was one village's last living man. The abbot was quick to care for the group, feeding refugees from rice stockpiled for students who, in better times, came to learn meditation and the wisdom of the Buddha. Within a few days, however, local officials barged into the monastery.

Severe thunderstorms packing large hail and tornadoes rumbled across the nation's midsection Sunday, killing at least eight people and damaging dozens of homes, authorities said. Iowa Homeland Security administrator David L. Miller said seven of the dead were killed by a tornado in northeast Iowa -- five from Parkersburg, 80 miles northeast of Des Moines, and two from nearby New Hartford. At least 50 injuries were reported. "Occasionally we have a death, but we have warning system. Seven deaths.

U.N. helicopters loaded with relief supplies have reached several areas of Myanmar's Irrawaddy River delta that had been cut off from regular aid since a devastating cyclone five weeks ago, a World Food Program spokesman said Monday. Four of the five aircraft that arrived over the weekend shuttled emergency supplies such as rice and water purification systems to villages, said Paul Risley, the spokesman. More sites were expected to be reached today, he said.

The toll rose Sunday to at least 57 people dead and eight missing as pounding weekend rains flooded wide areas of southern China and added to the misery of a nation already racked by natural disasters this year. More rain is forecast over the next 10 days, and authorities were concerned about a 130-foot-long crack in an embankment of the Xi River, a major tributary of the Pearl River. The opening put at risk the nearby city of Wuzhou, population 3 million.

One month after a massive earthquake killed nearly 70,000 people, some of the effects of the crisis may hardly outlast the rubble, even as other seismic shifts irrevocably shake the Chinese government and society. The cooperative response of local government officials to the quake will probably be short-lived, analysts said, as corruption and a sense of entitlement resurge just as billions of dollars flow into Sichuan province for reconstruction.

White was the color everyone wanted to see. It was a color few people would find. As the Cedar River swelled with a vengeance Thursday, it swallowed all but a handful of homes in this eastern Iowa hamlet of nearly 1,000. Those who fled earlier had made sure to leave something white tied to their front doors -- a sign to rescue crews that they were safe and gone. They knotted cotton rags over doorknobs. Tucked robe sashes into door frames.

Water from the swollen Mississippi River surged over more than 10 levees Thursday, flooding huge swaths of Missouri farmland as thousands of volunteers continued to pile sandbags in a desperate bid to protect their communities. The efforts brought mixed results in Winfield, a rural and commuter city of 1,200 about an hour north of St. Louis.