China's earthquake survivors endure frigid temperatures and mourn the dead

Survivors of an earthquake in YANGWA, China mourn the dead & endure frigid cold in temporary shelters, unsure how to rebuild their lives.

Surrounded by destruction, survivors of an earthquake mourned the dead and endured a frigid cold in temporary shelters Wednesday, unsure how to rebuild their lives in the remote mountains of northwest China.

“Look at this,” said Han Zhongmin, retrieving some belongings with his wife from the ruins of their house, built six years ago in Yangwa village. "My house turned into this overnight.”

Houses caved in and crumbled in a Monday night earthquake that killed at least 135 people and injured more than 900 others. 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, which is in Gansu province. His father pulled Ma’s son, whose back was slightly 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.

Nearly 15,000 homes collapsed in Gansu and more than 87,000 people have been resettled, provincial officials said at a Wednesday news conference. Many spent the night in shelters set up in the area as temperatures plunged well below freezing.