Police officer braves harsh conditions

By the time Phuntsok Drakpa sat down to talk about the rescue operation at Gyirong Port in the Xizang autonomous region on Tuesday, he still had not dealt with the insect that had burrowed into his skin days earlier.

He had more urgent things to do.

Phuntsok Drakpa, an officer at a community police station in Gyirong county, immediately volunteered to join the search-and-rescue effort after a deadly mudslide struck the port on Aug 26.

The journey from Lapher village, where his police station is located, to the port was not a road in the conventional sense. Much of it was a narrow trail cut into the mountainside, with a cliff on one side and a drop so deep that the bottom could not be seen, he said. In some places, there was no trail at all.

The officers had to push through dense brush, cutting branches, thorny vines and weeds to make their way forward. About 1.5 kilometers from the port, they reached the most dangerous section: a valley more than 200 meters deep, with slopes of 60 to 70 degrees.

"Some sections were bare rock. Others were wet and slippery from the rain. We had to use ropes to lower ourselves down," he said.

Phuntsok Drakpa had one thought as he moved: Get there as quickly as possible.

"If we arrived one minute earlier, there could be one more chance," he said.

The officers traveled about 7.7 km on foot. About 5.5 km could be covered at a slow jog, while the rest was so difficult to traverse that it consumed most of their time. The journey lasted more than 10 hours. They left at 9 am on Saturday and returned by helicopter the following morning, he recalled.

The mountain posed hazards beyond the disaster itself. There were leeches and poisonous snakes, as well as insects that lived in pine trees. One of them had burrowed into his skin, leaving a wound he was still carrying when he gave the interview.

The officers covered themselves as tightly as they could, fastening the cuffs of their uniforms to keep the insects out.

They slept together outdoors along the route. When they woke the next morning, they found a bear's paw print about two meters from where they had been sleeping.

"At the time, nobody had time to be frightened. We simply kept moving," he said.

From 9 am one day until noon the next, the officers ate nothing. At one point, they encountered firefighters and gave much of their food to them.

"Yet I did not feel hungry," he said.

They spent a night in the rain. He did not feel cold, either, though he knew that under normal circumstances he would have.

Once they arrived at the port, the task became harder to describe.

"The air smelled of decay. The site was completely quiet, without any sound."

The officers searched among the rocks, calling out and looking for any sign that someone might be trapped beneath them — a shoe, a piece of clothing, anything that might suggest where a person was.

"It was very difficult," Phuntsok Drakpa said. "There was nothing we could do except call out and look under the rocks."

If they found something, they dug. Sometimes, all they could do was cry, he said.

But there was no time to dwell on what they had seen. After the interview, Phuntsok Drakpa planned to head to Salhe township, taking the same mountain route again.

He still had not dealt with the insect in his skin.

"I plan to buy some insecticide and spray it so that the insect will come out on its own," he said.

Contact the writers at zhaoyimeng@chinadaily.com.cn