When the quake hit: new footage

For nearly two days Li Ke lay in the ruins of his school in Wudu. His legs were trapped but rescue workers had spotted his head in the rubble. Their hearts soared when they saw that he was moving. The soldiers and volunteers who picked their way through the jagged mound of bricks and concrete where 400 children once attended classes needed some good news. About half the children had raced outside when the earthquake shattered the school on Monday afternoon, but dozens more were trapped.

Li Ke was found within hours of the tremor, but parents had nothing but their bare hands to dig him out. The town was in chaos: barely a building was left standing on Wudu Street, where the school had once been the centre of the lives of so many children.

Nearly 24 hours later, doctors were able to attach a drip to Li Ke’s arm. Around him, soldiers picked away the rubble. A crane winched aside large slabs of broken concrete that were pinning the boy down. After another 24 hours a ripple went through the crowd: rescuers might be ready to bring Li Ke out. The machines fell silent, the soldiers took a step back and residents crowded forward. All eyes were trained on a spot near a corner of one of the few walls of the school still upright.

A cheer went up. Li Ke was out. The soldiers laid him on a door covered with a sheet. He was unconscious; his blue tracksuit was matted with dust and debris; a gash over his left eye was swollen and purple.

“Lay him here. Put him down first!” a nurse shouted frantically to the soldiers. They laid his makeshift stretcher on the ground. Medical staff took his pulse and adjusted his drip. One covered his face with a bright pink flannel to protect him from the burning sun. Satisfied, they then gave the nod for Li Ke to be taken to hospital.

Two rows of rescue workers and soldiers linked hands to form a corridor between the throng of anxious parents. The soldiers carried Li Ke out the school gate, loaded him in an ambulance and raced him to hospital. At least one more child had been saved.

For Zhang Aichun, the rescue was a moment of hope and despair. His voice hoarse with weeping, he gestured to the rubble of the school. “My daughter is inside. Yesterday I could hear her crying, ‘Mummy, Daddy’. Today she is silent.”

A mechanical digger revved its engine, ground over the rubble and began to toss chunks aside. Rescuers said that they held out little hope for dozens more children trapped under the concrete. Time is running out for them and for the thousands – maybe tens of thousands – of people trapped in buildings.

The death toll has been rising steadily. Official figures give nearly 15,000 dead, but more than 25,000 are buried under crumpled schools, factories and homes and 1,400 are missing. At least two counties have been virtually cut off by landslides, rock falls and roads twisted and torn by the quake.

Among the worst-hit was Beichuan, 160 kilometres (100 miles) northeast of the epicentre. About 10,000 people have been moved from the county into Jiuzhou stadium, on the edge of the city of Mianyang.

One young woman held up a scrap of cardboard on which she had written, with poignant eloquence, just two names: Li Aihua, Li Weihua. She was looking for her missing family, hoping that they had been evacuated, but the look on her face was one of despair.

Times Recommends

• Violent video games won’t corrupt
• Pope Benedict XVI: Alma Mater
• Chávez should know what’s good for him