(Xinhua)
Updated: 2008-05-14 21:24

BEIJING  -- A total of four Xinhua reporters Wednesday arrived in the epicenter area of the 7.8-magnitude quake in southwestern Sichuan Province, traveling by air, land and water with Chinese troops.

Reporters Li Xuanliang and Huang Shubo hiked with PLA soldiers into the Wenchuan County at 16:00 on Wednesday afternoon, and were 20 kilometers from Yingxiu Town, one of the most badly damaged area in Wenchuan.

On their way, they met a lot of people who fled Yingxiu, which was cut off from water and power for about two days. Most of the survivors were going to Zipingbu in Dujiangyan City, which is about 20 kilometers away. Only a few remained in the town.

Many people carried their injured family members and relatives with stretchers or slide bars, the local type of simplified rickshaw. Some of the injured were apparently dying.

A woman carried a dead infant wrapped in white clothes as if the baby was alive and hiked forward with her husband.

Some people carried their aged parents on wheelbarrows. "Our town is badly in need of drugs and drinking water," a survivor said.

"We saw PLA soldiers and armed police marching toward the disaster-hit area one group after another, and lots of ordinary people from the direction of Dujiangyan and migrant workers from other parts of the country coming to the rescue of their relatives," said one of the reporters.

Another reporter, Xu Zhuangzhi helicoptered into the county seat of Wenchuan, 100 kilometers away from the provincial capital city of Chengdu, at 10:22 a.m. Wednesday.

"The damage was devastating in one of its towns, Yingxiu," said Xu. "They are badly in need of food and drugs."

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