As of May 15, the China State Council Earthquake Relief Headquarters reported that the quake in Sichuan Province took 19,509 lives. The death toll is predicted to reach as high as 50,000.
As officials continue to asses the damage wrought by this calamity, moving stories of quake survivors have been pouring in from Wenchuan, the city nearest to the quake’s epicenter.
Pregnant Woman Survives After Fifty Hours Trapped in Rubble
A decade-old apartment building in Du Jiangyan City collapsed when the earthquake hit. Zhang Xiaoyan—who is 8 months pregnant—and her mother lived on the sixth floor.
They were trapped in the rubble of the building for more than 50 hours until they were saved by rescue workers on May 14. Relatives begged the exhausted rescue workers to find the three remaining family members from the rubble.
One rescuer, carrying only a ladder, told the family he would need to get a police dog to help dig out the rest of the people still trapped in the wreckage. Short of resources and manpower, China’s disaster response team still struggle to find survivors in the rubble left behind from this devastating quake.
