Helping hands

According to the Xizang Emergency Management Department, more than 15,000 emergency response personnel are participating in rescue and disaster relief work.

A total of 581 medical workers and 107 ambulances have been sent to treat the injured. As many as 61,500 people affected by the earthquake have been transferred to the 187 settlement centers that have been set up.

Migmar Tsering and four of his colleagues from Shigatse forest fire and rescue station were among the first batch of professional rescuers to arrive at the epicenter by Tuesday noon.

They used their hands to remove fallen rocks and tiles to rescue a woman in her 40s who was trapped under debris. She was found with multiple fractures, and they transported her to safety on a wooden stretcher before she was sent to a county hospital for treatment.

Wang Zhiping, head of the Shigatse forest fire and rescue station, said his team arrived at a village in Dingri county at 1:40 pm on Tuesday. Most of the houses in the area were severely damaged, he told China Youth Daily.

The rescuers shifted more than 300 villagers to safer places. However, the rescued villagers were extremely concerned about their livestock, especially yaks, which are considered valuable assets. So the next task was to rescue the trapped animals. By Tuesday afternoon, over a dozen yaks had been saved.

Zheng Long from the Xizang forest fire and rescue station said they had sent 300 firefighters to three townships near the epicenter. He arrived at a local village at 6:20 pm on Tuesday to find around 85 percent of the village's 76 houses had collapsed.

"One of the elderly women was in great distress because all her four yaks were buried under her collapsed house," he said. "Luckily, we could recover the yaks and other necessities."

Wang Tianyou, who works at the State Grid Lhokha Power Supply Co, said he and his colleagues arrived at a village near the epicenter of the earthquake at 2:00 am on Wednesday.

They immediately started work on reinstating power supply in the village. In two hours, light bulbs were on in 21 tents, he said. More than 300 tents had been illuminated by Thursday afternoon.

An Zhengfa, an official at Thongley village, said that when the quake struck, he could not stand straight as his house was shaking so badly.

When the tremors stopped, he and his colleagues ran toward the village to check on fellow villagers. "Many houses had collapsed and there was dust everywhere, and I realized that something terrible had happened," he said.

After reporting the situation to township officials, he and his colleagues organized other villagers to carry out rescue efforts.

They managed to pull out a villager buried in the debris in an hour, but sadly he did not survive.

The first batch of 15 professional rescuers arrived at the village by 11:00 am. By 1:00 am, three trapped under the debris had been found dead.

Relief equipment and materials arrived on Tuesday afternoon. The rescuers set up tents so that villagers had shelter for the night. The next day, the rescuers began to pull out buried livestock.