Nation & World

<< Previous   of   Next >> Associated Press  (click to enlarge) A woman and rescuers call for her family member who is trapped under rubble of a collapsed apartment house in Mianyang in southwest China's Sichuan province on Thursday. Chinese officials said Thursday that the earthquake's death toll could more than double to 50,000.   ADVERTISEMENT   Related Stories • Chinese quick to offer generous earthquake aid 5/16/08   CONTACT THE HERALD Do you have a news tip? newstips@heraldnet.com | 425.339.3400   Published: Friday, May 16, 2008 China's earthquake horror prompts acts of selflessness By Ching-ching Ni Los Angeles Times SHIFANG, China -- Peng Hogan had just sat down for lunch when the earth began to shake. After pushing a slow-moving friend out the door to safety, he rushed to a nearby elementary school that collapsed in Monday's massive earthquake. "With my two arms I carried out at least 20 children," Peng recalled Thursday at a makeshift shelter here. "They were fourth- and fifth-graders, kindergarteners. Maybe 13 were alive." "I kept yelling out, 'Is there anyone alive?' " Peng said, displaying the cuts and scrapes on his arms and legs from hours of clawing through concrete and rubble with his bare hands. In the instant that wiped out entire communities in central China, something besides body counts and refugees was born: heroes. Ordinary people doing what to them were tiny gestures that made the difference between life and death. "I'm not a hero, I just did what I needed to do," said Peng, 33, an unmarried telephone line repairman who later walked more than three hours with his parents from the mountainous small town of Hongbai near the epicenter of the 7.9 magnitude earthquake. Survivors from Hongbai were cut off from the outside world as the roads vanished under landslides, blocking rescue workers. Until help arrived, the survivors kicked into instant search and rescue mode and helped save relatives and neighbors. Wang Zhaorong was just returning from her lunch break when the factory where she worked started to shake. Knowing a co-worker was still inside a dormitory taking a nap, she banged on the door until her colleague awoke and the two fled together. In the scramble, she fell and broke her leg. Xie Peng, 13, escaped with his life from a middle school that pancaked in the quake. He was lucky, he said, because he is short and thus sat in the front row of a crowded classroom of 47. "There were two doors, but the one in the back was locked," he said. "We could only get out from the front." Xie proceeded to help his buried classmates. "I heard one yell out, 'Save me!' " he said. "I looked closely and saw his hand. I went to get some adults and together we cleared away the debris and pulled him to safety." Zhao Zhonghua, a cook in the cafeteria of a cement factory, scurried out before the building crumbled. The 37-year-old didn't even have time to check in with his family before assisting the wife of a fellow cook desperately searching for her husband and mother. Both of them worked in the same kitchen and both were missing. "For five hours I dug through the rubble," sand Zhao, also wearing wounds on his hands and legs from the rescue effort. "He was a co-worker and a friend. His wife was crying for help and she had no one left. I had to do something." Before nightfall they pulled out the mother, who was alive. The husband, however, did not make it.

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