By Zhang Haizhou/Huang Zhiling (China Daily)
Updated: 2008-05-15 07:00

HANWANG, Sichuan - The clock tower, one of the tallest buildings in town, still showed the time when Monday's deadly quake struck - 2:28 pm.

A damaged clock tower shows the time of Monday's powerful earthquake. The haunting reminder was photographed on Wednesday in the town of Hanwang, Sichuan Province. [Agencies]

But the whole of Hanwang under the tower bore a different, devastated face.

As the first rays of dawn crept across this town yesterday, it illuminated endless rows of apartment blocks reduced to rubble.

Bodies could be seen wedged among the debris, while homeless families and their neighbors huddled on the roadside or in the open, shielding themselves from the heavy rain with plastic tarps or tents.

The rubble lay low against the wet earth. Dozens of parents gathered in the yards of leveled schools, searching for their children. They clawed at pieces of concrete, kicking and screaming in frustration.

Hanwang, with a population of 60,000, is only 30 km away from the quake epicenter of Wenchuan. The place is dominated by a big factory - the Dongfang Steam Turbine Plant - and most people in town know each other.

But overnight, residents found familiar faces missing. Many were buried under collapsed factory workshops or schools.

Local authorities have estimated that thousands of people have been buried under debris, many of them students.

Rescuers were racing against the clock in the mud and rain, searching for and saving as many survivors as possible. The exact number of casualties in town was not known.

Schools were the top priority for rescuers. Some of the more fortunate students escaped with a severed limb or fracture.

But the corpses of others were seen being carried out, while many more lay crushed beneath the rubble of the school building.

At 1 pm yesterday, 18-year-old Wei Lin was found in the debris of a local senior high school. Buried in the rubble for two days, she was barely breathing and had already lost consciousness. Her faced was covered in mud and her blue jeans torn into shreds.

Her mother, 39, burst into tears at the sight of her daughter being brought out from the debris.

She ran alongside the stretcher carrying her daughter.

"Thank you, thank you for saving my daughter," she said to every rescuer she met.

At the ruins of the four-story school, a group of parents stopped crying and joined the rescue efforts.

But when six bodies of students were brought out in just five minutes, another round of cries and tears broke out.

A resident said that only one class had been taking physical education lessons in the playground when the quake struck. The rest of the 17 classes, each with about 60 students, were buried under the building.

China Daily reporters counted more than 50 bodies at the school by 1 pm yesterday. Rescuers said they were finding more corpses than survivors.

The situation was not any better at factory workshops. Buildings of the Dongfang Steam Turbine Plant were virtually destroyed by the quake, leaving at least 500 workers and their family members missing or buried in the rubble, said Zhang Zhiying, general manager of the plant.

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