China's earthquake survivors endure frigid temperatures and mourn the dead
ABC News
Surrounded by destruction, the relatives of an earthquake victim are mourning her death in temporary shelters and frigid temperatures high in the mountains of northwest China
YANGWA, China -- Surrounded by destruction, the relatives of an earthquake victim mourned her death Wednesday in temporary shelters and frigid temperatures high in the mountains of northwest China.
Houses caved in and crumbled in a Monday night earthquake that killed at least 131 people and injured more than 900 others, Chinese media reports said. Most of the casualties were in Gansu province and the rest in the neighboring province of Qinghai.
In the predawn darkness, Ma Lianqiang stood next to the body of his deceased wife wrapped in blankets in a tent-like temporary shelter lit by a single overhead light. His wife was hit and buried by debris in her mother’s house, where she had gone to stay because she was ill.
Ma and other members of his extended family survived despite extensive damage to their house in Yangwa, a village in Gansu province. His father pulled Ma’s son, whose back was injured, out of the rubble. His uncle said they heard the earthquake and then the house started collapsing.
“We crawled out in fear,” the uncle, Ma Chengming, said.
