China survivors dazed and fearful after quake

DUJIANGYAN, China (Reuters) - If Zhang Zhiyin had hesitated only a minute, he wouldn't be alive today.

Now he wanders through the rainy streets of Dujiangyan, hoping to find friends who survived Monday's earthquake that leveled his school and much of this Chinese town.

"We had just finished lunch and were getting ready to go back to class. As soon as I left the building, everything started shaking," Zhang told Reuters. "I don't know how many of my friends are alive."

The 7.9 magnitude quake, whose epicenter was about 50 km away, buried an estimated 900 teenagers at Zhang's school.

"I've been wandering around town ever since. I don't know where to go or what to do," he said.

Some 10,000 were feared dead in the disaster centered in China's Sichuan province and whose force rippled across the country.

Troops surrounded Zhang's school, keeping frantic relatives back from rescuers working to free people from the rubble of the three-storey building.

"My child, my child!" cried one woman, grabbing at a soldier and pleading with him to be allowed past the security cordon.

Survivors were being ferried to a nearby hospital, where a tarpaulin had been set up outside to treat victims.

Elsewhere, Dujiangyan was a town in shock.

Piles of rubble were all that was left in places where buildings stood just a day ago. Clothes and other belongings were scattered through the streets.

"NOTHING LEFT"

Clusters of people huddled from the heavy rain that has hampered rescue efforts under makeshift shelters, while others wandered the streets aimlessly, some wearing only dressing gowns.

"There is nothing left. I'm living in that tent now," said Tian Jiajun, gesturing to a tarpaulin hung between some trees by the side of the road.

"I don't know what's going to happen. I don't know what I'll do," she said.

Xu Junqing was dozing on the fourth floor of a building when the earthquake struck.

"It was a terrifying experience. I was shaken out of bed. Then I just ran outside," he said.

The building he was in was relatively unscathed, but the one just next door was demolished.

But with aftershocks -- some as strong as 6.0 -- still shaking the region, residents were on edge.

"Everyone's been told to move to open ground," said Xu.

Some were desperate to leave the destroyed town and find news of their families around the region, but the quake triggered landslides that made some roads impassable, phone lines were patchy and roads were being cleared for emergency vehicles.

People sat in buses grounded at the station, with public transport to and from the city at a standstill.

The bus station's clock had stopped at 2:28, the time the quake struck on Monday.

Soldiers in trucks, along with fire engines and ambulances, were flooding into the town to help with the rescue and maintain order.

The army had established a cordon in front of banks, but most residents seemed too dazed to engage in any looting.

One young man surveyed the rubble, unable to answer questions.

"I felt nothing, I felt nothing," was all he said.

(Writing by Lindsay Beck; Editing by Nick Macfie and Miral Fahmy)