Luding quake toll rises to 74

The death toll from a magnitude 6.8 earthquake that hit Luding county in Ganzi Tibetan autonomous prefecture, Sichuan province, on Monday had risen to 74 by Wednesday.

Forty people were killed in the autonomous prefecture, and the other 34 were in the neighboring city of Ya'an. Thirty-five people remained missing and more than 270 were injured, according to the information office of the Sichuan provincial government on Wednesday.

Nine of the 24 rural roads blocked by the quake in Ganzi and four of nine rural roads blocked in Ya'an had been reopened. To reopen the passage from the Luding county seat to the quake's epicenter at the town of Moxi in Luding, the traffic rescue team used excavators and front loaders. By 4 pm on Tuesday, the road was reopened.

All-out efforts were mounted in the search and rescue operations. As of 8 am on Wednesday, more than 10,000 people, including members of the People's Liberation Army and the People's Armed Police Force, firefighters and nine helicopters, had been sent to the quake zone. Rescue workers were visiting each village and household in the area.

When Zhang Yongjun, a 41-year-old officer of the Special Service Brigade of the Sichuan Provincial Forest Fire Brigade, and his 50 men approached Moxi at 8 pm on Monday, aftershocks interrupted their progress.

"We had to use the rope climbing method to reach the center of Moxi," he said.

When Zhang Guosheng, head of the Yajiang County Forest Fire Brigade in Ganzi, and 17 brigade members approached the village of Qinggangping in Moxi after the earthquake, the village bridge had been destroyed.

Zhang and his men clung to ropes to cross the river and entered the village to rescue the injured. Later, they felled trees to build a makeshift bridge to transport the injured.

A total of 124 resettlement sites were set up to accommodate more than 20,000 people in Ganzi and Ya'an.

From Monday to Tuesday, 79 metric tons of daily necessities were transported from Kangding, the capital of Ganzi autonomous prefecture, Luding and Chengdu, the capital of Sichuan province, to Moxi. The supply of major daily necessities in Ganzi and Ya'an is sufficient at this time, and the prices of goods are stable, the authorities said.

Many businesses, foundations and people from all walks of life gave donations to the rescue effort. As of 8 am on Wednesday, enterprises under the central government had donated more than 1.1 billion yuan ($158 million), authorities said.

Many Chinese know of Luding because they learned of the Luding Bridge at a young age. During the Long March 87 years ago, the bridge was crucial to the survival of the Central Red Army led by the Communist Party of China.

Soldiers of the Central Red Army marched an exhausting 120 km in a single day on May 28, 1935, and upon reaching the bridge on the west bank of the Dadu River, they found that the planks had been removed and only 13 iron chains remained.

Under cover of cannons and machine guns, 22 soldiers clung to the iron chains of the bridge, laying planks under intense machine-gun fire from Kuomintang troops on the other side of the bridge.

Although several soldiers were injured and fell into the Dadu River, others crawled ahead on the planks they had laid, firing gunshots and launching grenades until they finally took control of the east bank.

Ning Guangxia contributed to this story.