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.

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.

Zhang said workers had been looking for missing colleagues by digging at the collapsed building with shovels and their bare hands.

"Whenever a cry for help was heard among the debris, we would rush there immediately," he said.

Luo Yongxiang, a major from a military training base in the nearby city of Chongzhou, raced to the town on Tuesday afternoon with about 300 soldiers and officers to help with the rescue.

Luo said that by 1 pm yesterday, they had found 300 people in debris.But only one was still alive.

"As time passes, hope of survivors becomes slim. We have to be quick," he said.

Insufficient supplies

Another major problem facing Hanwang is an insufficient supply of basic necessities. Once a vehicle carrying food and water appeared, residents were seen rushing and grabbing whatever was available.

Fortunately, many people have voluntarily driven to Hanwang to offer more supplies.

A yellow bus owned by Deyang's Qiaodan Meiyu Kindergarten had been making frequent trips between Deyang and Mianzhu to offer help since Tuesday morning, said the director of the kindergarten.

At the local Wudu Hospital, physician Jia Zhengping was seen treating patients housed in a makeshift tent outdoors, as hospitals were severely damaged.

"In order to save the patients, some doctors risk their lives by rushing into unstable buildings to fetch medicine," he said.

"We are very short of medical supplies."

Students' savior

Many locals were also deeply moved by how a teacher, Tan Qianqiu, had died saving students.

When rescuers reached Tan in the debris of a collapsed school building on Tuesday night, he was found with his arms wide open over a desk.

Four students were found under the desk. Tan was dead, but the four were alive.

"Without Tan's protection, the students would have died," said a local resident whose niece, Liu Hongli, was one of the fortunate students.

"He is a hero."

Fifty-year-old Tan was a teacher of politics at the middle school attached to the Dongfang Steam Turbine Plant in Hanwang, which collapsed during Monday's earthquake and buried at least 200 students, local authorities have said.

Rescuers found his body at about 10pm on Tuesday.

His wife, Zhang Guanrong, could hardly speak at the sight of her husband's corpse yesterday.

"I overheard that a teacher saved four students last night, but I never expected it to be you..." Zhang whispered to him.

The red-eyed woman carefully wiped clean the face of her husband and combed his hair to the style he liked.

While reaching for the cold fingers of her husband, she burst into tears.

"They were warm and soft two days ago ..." she said.

"Tan was one of the teachers that loved the students most in our school," said another teacher, Xia Kaixiu.

"He would pick up a very small stone on the road for fear of it injuring students."

(China Daily 05/15/2008 page3)