Survivors flee flattened China quake town

A girl is dragged away by soldiers from a rescue helicopter at a temporary airport in the earthquake-hit Yingxiu town of Wenchuan, the epicenter, Sichuan province, May 14, 2008. The girl wanted to take care of her seriously injured teacher who was to be transferred to a safe area. About 30 helicopters have been used to transfer injured survivors and one helicopter can only load 10 to 12 persons each time although there are thousands of injured survivors waiting to be transferred, China Daily reported. Picture taken May 14, 2008.

YINGXIU, China (Reuters) - Ning Feng spent two hungry days limping out of Yingxiu after he decided that waiting to be rescued could be more dangerous than risking landslides and exhaustion on the trek out.

"I had to do it on my own. Who was there to help me?" the 19-year-old painter of traditional Tibetan art said, as he stopped to rest by the winding mountain path that for days was many earthquake refugees' only escape from devastation.

The small town in the mountains of southwestern China from which he fled was among the worst hit by a massive earthquake on Monday, thought to have killed more than 50,000. About 4.8 million people have lost their homes.

Just a few dozen km (miles) from the epicenter of the quake, Yingxiu has been accessible only by foot or helicopter since the tremor ripped apart bridges and triggered lethal landslides on the mountain highway that connected it to the rest of China.

Telephone lines and mobile phone masts were also knocked out, so a trail of frantic relatives trekked into the town even as many survivors began heading out, adding to the burdens of providing food and safe water.

By Friday it looked like a battlefield with helicopters roaring overhead and thousands of soldiers and firefighters milling around on the sandy river bank, near a row of hospital tents overflowing with the injured.

Many of the buildings still standing were missing huge chunks, riddled by yawning cracks, tilted at angles that seemed to defy the laws of physics or even leaning against other wrecks with doors opening to the sky rather than the street.

But survivors and rescue teams darted into shops and homes to pull out food and medicine, and searched ruins for quilts, blankets and wood to floor their temporary shelters.

BODIES PILE UP

Five days into the rescue effort the town is still so cut off -- officials said it could take a year to fully repair the road -- that even basic dignities have become a luxury.

In the courtyard of the collapsed primary school, where residents say up to 400 children died, rows of small corpses laid out in the courtyard are sprayed with disinfectant.

Parents say they have been forbidden to bury their children because there is nowhere sanitary nearby and several weep quietly at the edge of the courtyard.

"We have come to keep her company," said one mother as tears streamed down her cheeks. "We have nothing else to do."

Death is everywhere in the remains of Yingxiu.

The bloodied hand of a victim reached out of one flattened house, and several bodies lay beside the wreckage of their former homes. At least 30 were lined up on the beach.

The uncovered face of one man looked out blankly on the chaos that had engulfed the town, and a tiny bundle lay next to one adult body, both wrapped in matching fabric.

Small offerings of biscuits and dried food from stricken relatives lay beside some, even though some survivors were still struggling to find enough food and clean water.

There were glimmers of hope. On Friday morning firefighters from the eastern port of Qingdao were burrowing into the wreckage of a power station where at least one person was still talking to rescuers.

But many of those searching for family and friends have either found them or given up, and are now headed for cleaner, safer places.

Just 2,000 civilians were in the town by Friday morning, said Xia Guofu, the head of rescue efforts in Yingxiu who oversees 5,000 workers from across the country.

But some are determined to start cleaning the wreckage and rebuilding the shattered town.

"This is still our home. Where else would we go?" said Li Hong, a restaurant owner who had lost his father in the quake.

(Editing by Benjamin Kang Lim and Giles Elgood)