Survivors flee flattened China quake town

By Emma Graham-Harrison

YINGXIU, China (Reuters) - Ning Feng spent two hungry days limping out of Yingxiu after he decided that waiting to be rescued could be more dangerous than risking landslides and exhaustion on the trek out.

"I had to do it on my own. Who was there to help me?" the 19-year-old painter of traditional Tibetan art said, as he stopped to rest by the winding mountain path that for days was many earthquake refugees' only escape from devastation.

The small town in the mountains of southwestern China from which he fled was among the worst hit by a massive earthquake on Monday, thought to have killed more than 50,000. About 4.8 million people have lost their homes.

Just a few dozen km (miles) from the epicentre of the quake, Yingxiu has been accessible only by foot or helicopter since the tremor ripped apart bridges and triggered lethal landslides on the mountain highway that connected it to the rest of China.

Telephone lines and mobile phone masts were also knocked out, so a trail of frantic relatives trekked into the town even as many survivors began heading out, adding to the burdens of providing food and safe water.

By Friday it looked like a battlefield with helicopters roaring overhead and thousands of soldiers and firefighters milling around on the sandy river bank, near a row of hospital tents overflowing with the injured.

Many of the buildings still standing were missing huge chunks, riddled by yawning cracks, tilted at angles that seemed to defy the laws of physics or even leaning against other wrecks with doors opening to the sky rather than the street.

But survivors and rescue teams darted into shops and homes to pull out food and medicine, and searched ruins for quilts, blankets and wood to floor their temporary shelters.