By staff reporter Ouyang Hongliang

Editor's note: The following dispatch was filed by satellite phone from Yingxiu County before the area was hit by a major aftershock around 8 a.m. local time May 15. Reporter Ouyang Hongliang and his colleagues are safe, but the Xinhua news agency said houses that withstood the initial quake were destroyed.
 
We finally entered Yingxiu County at 9:30 p.m. May 14 to survey a community that, because of its significant population, has suffered most from the earthquake that struck southwest China two days before.

Ouyang Hongliang

The scene is beyond imagination. Only one out of 10 people in this county of 30,000 survived. There is no electricity, no running water.

Feeling my way in the pitch dark, I smell the stench of corpses and hear only dim cries for help from under the debris. Most houses are gone. Only the county government office building is still standing.

Helicopters have made several deliveries of food and water. But it's far from enough. 

The journey to Yingxiu was my most difficult ever as a reporter. Two photographers from Caijing headquarters in Beijing joined me. Together we traveled with some of the thousands of soldiers searching for survivors in Yingxiu as well as the earthquake epicenter Wenchuan County and other areas of Sichuan Province near Dujiangyan, a city that's now a staging ground for rescue efforts.

We walked three hours to a nearby dam and, after a boat ride, trekked another 6 kilometers on foot through the mountains of Yingxiu. Broken furniture floated in streams. Mudslides blocked the path, and every now and then rocks tumbled from hills overhead or cliffs under foot.

Soldiers have been dispatched from around the country and as far as eastern China's Shandong Province. They are struggling to help everywhere. None have rested in two days. They are traveling to Yingxiu on foot, since all roads have been destroyed.

Progress is slow. The soldiers carry only digging tools and basic supplies such as food and water. They're mainly working with their hands.

Local residents tell me that some trapped victims whose cries were heard just a day before have fallen silent. Most rescue forces are concentrating on a collapsed elementary school that buried 400 pupils. So far, they've dug out only 160. I see a girl lifted from under a pile of bricks, with panic in her eyes.

A minute later, a teacher's body is discovered. Her lifeless arms were spread apart, apparently sheltering the five children underneath who are found alive.

Rescuers tell me children buried under the shattered concrete had been singing to encourage each other. Now their voices have faded.

We need help, more help, desperately. No one knows how long those trapped in the dark can last. Every minute counts, every hand counts.

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