Aftershocks, supply shortage hinder quake rescue (2)

DIRE NEED

Quake survivors in Lushan County are in urgent need of water, food and tents. Xinhua reporters witnessed that residents were waiting for relief goods along the roads linking remote mountain towns in Lushan. Children held up cardboard describing their distress. "500 people, no food, no water, no tents," read a paperboard.

"I had no food for a whole day," said a resident in the Wangjia Village of Longmen Township in Lushan.

The villager was queuing for mineral water dished out by Chen Guangbiao, a high-profile Chinese philanthropist.

Chen said he distributed 1,000 quilts and 1,000 kg of bread while promising to raise 2.3 million yuan (372,337 U.S. dollars) for the quake-stricken region.

But, many of the villagers still gathered at the road near the gate of the village, waiting for the arrival of the rescue teams, as all their food had been buried in the debris.

The county partially regained access to water supply after a water plant resumed production at 1 p.m.. About 100,000 residents in Lushan could get water for emergency use, local authorities said.

In the Zhongli Township, 20 km north of the Ya'an City proper, local villagers have set up make-shift tents with any possible materials at hand.

In Baoxing, many local residents spent the night outdoors, in short of food, water and clothing, as there were not enough tents for every family and people were afraid of returning to their ramshackle homes to get supplies amid constant aftershocks.

POURING AIDS

Chinese Premier Li Keqiang on Sunday urged the country's railway and transportation departments to make every effort to facilitate the entry of tents, quilts and other materials into the quake-hit area.

With resumed traffic and eased traffic jams on more roads, relief supplies are reaching an increasing number of the needy survivors.

About 12,700 tents, 34,100 quilts and 12,700 camp beds, as well as 12,700 tonnes of food and drinking water, have arrived at the quake-hit zone as of 2 p.m., said Zhong Mian, vice governor of Sichuan.

Local government has relocated 171,000 people whose houses were toppled or damaged in the quakes, Zhong said.

The survivors are also helping themselves. In one of the relocation sites in Lushan's Baosheng Township, over 100 people are handing each other dishes, sharing the food they cooked with meat and vegetables they risked their lives to fetch from their damaged houses.

"My food is also theirs," one of them told Xinhua.

As of Sunday afternoon, water had been drained off from five reservoirs in Lushan, which suffered cracks and leakage and had posed a threat to people living in the lower reaches, to ensure the local residents' safety, according to a Lushan County government statement.

The quake-stricken area is expected to receive rainfall in the following three days, according to the Sichuan Provincial Meteorological Observatory.