China's Recovery Effort Is an Overwhelming Task
China has mobilized one of the largest relief operations in its modern history, to aid victims of Monday's epic earthquake. Nearly 100,000 military personnel have been deployed to the disaster zone. Amid inclement weather and a series of aftershocks that has complicated relief efforts, soldiers have in some cases parachuted into areas too isolated to be reached in other ways.
But as a trek into one of the worst hit areas shows, the effort is falling short for many victims.
In the town of Beichuan, about two kilometers from the nearest functioning road, rescuers dug frantically through the rubble of a wrecked middle school. At other schools in the area, they were able to pull out survivors. Beichuan sits in the heart of a county with the same name that has accounted for an estimated 5,000 deaths -- roughly a third of the nearly 15,000 deaths officially reported so far.
Further into town, amid a tangle of toppled buildings and giant boulders from the surrounding mountains, there is an eerie silence penetrated by the cries of trapped survivors who aren't being reached.
Read the report from Shai Oster in Beichuan, China, and James T. Areddy in Shanghai:
Plus, read the report from Gordon Fairclough on a Sichuan mother who dug for two days in an effort to free her son and husband after their home collapsed:
See complete coverage of the earthquake:
