"Can I get some water?" Those were 70-year-old Hu Mingchun's first words on reaching a safe place five days after the May 12 deadly earthquake leveled Beichuan county in Sichuan province.

Hu was rescued from a village in a narrow valley between forested mountains about 2,000 m above the sea level after an eight-hour ordeal.

Hundreds of people live in the villages nestled in the mountains, and most of them were working in the fields when the quake struck on May 12. That's why they escaped possible death.

But the quake razed most of their houses, burying their food and cutting their source of water. They survived five days in such conditions, but the situation has worsened now.

Moreover, falling boulders and mudslides have become an added threat, forcing them to flee. But not all can do so. The elderly, for instance, are handicapped. Some mountain slopes are too steep, and the narrow footpaths have disappeared after the quake.

Some soldiers, led by Hu Quantong, son of the old man, took eight hours to carry him on a stretcher down the steep incline of a mountain. Hu Mingchun had been living alone in the village after his wife died some years ago. The soldiers had to tie him to the stretcher to cross the most precipitous slopes.

"My head is spinning and my legs are aching, but I'm okay," the old man said after he was transferred to Mianyang city, of which Beichuan is a part.

Hu Mingchun is one of the lucky ones for hundreds of his fellow villagers, mostly the elderly and children, are still trapped back home. Once a prosperous county of 30,000 people, Beichuan has been wiped off the map now.

About 10,000 people are confirmed dead, with many others buried under the rubbles or missing. Most of the survivors have fled to safer places. That's why Beichuan looks like a ghost town.

The stench of rotting bodies is overpowering. But for the rescue teams, the threat of falling boulders is worse. So fragile are the mountains now that even a helicopter carrying relief for the villagers could can trigger a mudslide, an official said.

(China Daily May 19, 2008)