(Agencies)
Updated: 2008-05-20 09:05

BEICHUAN - 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.

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 a.m. 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 p.m. 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 state-run 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."

Monday also marked a week since the quake, a good time, the rescue volunteers said, for finding someone. "It's our greatest hope to find someone. We would be so happy," said a member of the Guizhou Fire Battalion team who would give only his surname, Zhao. "Even if we have 1 percent of hope, it's enough for us."

The Guizhou team was trying to reach the person whose ear was first found. As the cool morning turned into a blazing hot afternoon, team members in bright orange jumpsuits, white helmets and facemasks were joined by soldiers in military fatigues. The maneuvered heavy machinery to pry apart stubborn pieces of debris. A crane lifted huge slabs of concrete.

"Slowly! Slowly!" rescuers shouted, worried that the hole they were making in the pile would suddenly collapse.

Equipment used to measure vital signs were lowered in. There were very faint signs of life. The growing crowd watching the process -- mostly journalists and soldiers taking pictures on their cell phones -- craned their necks. An ambulance equipped with a resuscitator and oxygen stood by.

The work stopped only twice: during a brief but strong aftershock around 4 p.m., and at 2:28 p.m., when emergency vehicles, police cars and work vehicles honked their horns and sirens crescendo in unison to mark the anniversary of the start of the quake.

There were many false alarms as excitement grew when it seemed like the rescue was almost complete -- then dimmed when it became obvious the person was still trapped. It was never clear what building they were in before it collapsed or whether it was a man or a woman.

By late afternoon, the group of onlookers had thinned and rescuers had taken a new tack.

"Right now, we think the person is about 4 meters (13 feet) deep. We've gone 2 meters (6.5 feet) in and there's a piece of concrete that's blocking us," said an official from the Ministry of Public Security's Fire Battalion told reporters.

"The space can fit only 1.5 people but we have two people squeezed in there, chipping away at the concrete. We do not dare use anything bigger," said the official, who refused to give his name but said he spoke on behalf of the agency.

It was much the same for the trapped woman with the electronic game. Once detected, rescuers surveyed the site. An argument over how to proceed ensued: should they tear through the ground-level rubble or drill from above?

Eventually, they drilled in from the floor above -- and found no one. The mood deflated and the rescue experts dwindled away,

"Sometimes people use their last ounce of strength to call out to us and when they hear that we are coming to save them. They are so emotional, they die," said Wang Jianwei, a member of Zhang's National Rescue Team and who found the 61-year-old woman earlier in the day.

Only a handful of soldiers and two volunteers remained at the site, unconvinced that the space was empty. They resumed calling out to the woman and banging on metal.

"All of us heard the music and some of us heard her voice. There's definitely someone in there," said Meng Ye, a 40-year-old volunteer from the central city of Xi'an. "That sound will haunt me all night."

The men worked after the sun set, using only a small flashlight to keep the darkness away.