(Agencies/Xinhua)
Updated: 2008-05-21 00:49

Seeking Tiny Signs of Life

Beichuan, China - In the thin light of morning, rescuers pointing a flashlight into a pile of debris saw what looked like a person's ear. The victim was deep inside the rubble; they could not tell if it was a man or a woman.

Chinese rescuers carry a woman to safety after getting her out of the rubble of a market in Beichuan, Sichuan province, May 19, 2008. The woman was saved about 164 hours after a killer earthquake struck a week ago. [Agencies]

Rescue crews searching for dwindling numbers of survivors from China's earthquake are looking for the smallest of clues.

On Monday, they found two: the ear, attached to a person showing the faintest signs of life, and the electronic beep of a toy.

The tiny traces of hope came at different times of day in Beichuan, a town reduced to mounds of rubble in last week's quake. And they set off hours of painstaking work as rescuers tried to determine the safest approaches to keep debris from shifting and burying the survivors -- if they were still alive.

It started around 6 am. Survivors who have come daily to search the wreckage for lost family members shouted to emergency workers, saying they thought they might have found someone. Shining flashlights 13 feet down into the wreckage, they found a sign.

"We saw an ear. It was not decayed," said Xu Xiangqian, part of the Volunteers of Nantong Red Cross Society near Shanghai, who helped with the work. "And we knew maybe there was some hope."

The rescuers surveyed the site, which was shaded by a tree, strategizing ways in and chipping away at the concrete. A heavy crane sat ready, roaring to life when needed.

As they worked on, around 5 pm in another corner of what was the town, at the end of a road, covered in glass, shoes and other belongings, geologists inspecting a collapsed apartment building, heard the tinny sound of music, like that from an electronic game. When they shouted, they said a woman's voice -- weak and faint -- responded.

Both rescues ended in uncertainty after hours as night fell. Such endings were becoming more common as the magnitude-8.0 quake's aftermath stretched into its ninth day, lowering the chances for survivors. Rescue workers said they have been called to numerous sites after possible signs of life were detected only to find nothing.

"We'd come out, we'd work for more than half a day and in the end, nothing," said Zhang Qingshan, a member of the National Rescue Team, who lost his voice in the first few days of the tragedy because he had been shouting out to possible survivors who had been trapped.

Still survival remains possible. Rescuers speculated that the woman near the electronic toy stood a reasonable chance. Seeing a nearby sign for a restaurant in the debris, they wondered if the woman might have food to survive on. They tapped the storefront's mangled metal gate and shouted "Hello? Is there anyone there? Hello?" over and over again.

Rescuers were buoyed by the midmorning retrieval of a 61-year-old woman from the ruins of a market 164 hours after being trapped.

"It was a miracle of life," the Xinhua News Agency quoted medical worker Zeng Jun, as saying. "After hours of emergency treatment, Li showed normal signs and can answer simple questions."

Her son, Zhao Jun, who learned of the rescue on television and rushed to the hospital, described his mother as "an ordinary old lady and not in good shape."

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