Quake rescuers fight fatigue and seek signs of life

By John Ruwitch

BEICHUAN, China (Reuters) - A billboard on the road into Beichuan shows a picturesque hill town with a river snaking past. What remains after Monday's earthquake is a horror scene.

Navy medic Han Zhihai, walking into the near-deserted town from a camp nearby after taking a lunch break, points to a huge boulder, one of many by the dirt-covered road that careened down the adjacent mountain during the giant tremor.

"Legs," he says.

Jutting from under the rock are two legs, feet pointing down, one still wearing a purple high heeled shoe.

Further into town, some 90 km (60 miles) northeast of the epicenter of the quake, streets are buckled and cracked and every building is ruined in one way or another.

Some crumbled into unrecognizable piles of wood, concrete and bricks. Others came clapping down, the floors finally resting stacked like pancakes with no space in between. Many more buildings dropped largely intact from the second floor up, crushing the ground floor and everything in it.

"That used to be a school," one of Han's teammates said, pointing towards a giant pile of boulders and dirt that slid down a mountain. The only thing left standing was a flagpole with the national flag still flying.

"At some of these places it will be impossible to extract bodies."

Five days after the 7.9 magnitude earthquake struck, Han, his team of six, and hundreds of other soldiers and rescue teams from around the country are fighting fatigue but still carefully searching for survivors in one of the hardest hit areas.

Beichuan is eerie and deserted except for the rescue crews and a handful of residents calling out for loved ones or digging for them. Groups of peasants walking from distant hill villages pass through the littered streets seeking help.

Han and his five weary colleagues have been administering first aid to live victims when they are drawn from the rubble.

"We've been working about 20 hours a day. I haven't washed my face, I haven't washed my feet, I haven't brushed my teeth in three days," Han said on Friday.

"This is really difficult," said Zhang Mingye, a member of the team from the main navy hospital in Beijing. "But we have to do it. We have orders to follow. It's starting to get hard to find live ones now."

RUNNING OUT OF TIME

Time was running out, but there are still some survivors. Sichuan vice governor Li Chengyun said there were more than 14,000 people buried in rubble in the whole province. Earlier on Friday, Han's team tended to two children pulled from the wreckage of a school.