May 20, 2008 7:55 am US/Eastern
Aftershock Warning Panics China Survivors
CHENGDU, China (CBS) ―
Thousands of survivors of the China earthquake awoke Tuesday after spending a night sleeping in cars and in the open, frightened by government warnings of a potential strong aftershock.
People in the provincial capital of Chengdu got in their cars and drove east - toward plains and away from the quake zone to the northwest - after the warning late Monday. At intersections outside the city, clusters of people slept on bedrolls. Cars were parked along a service road to a highway, their drivers sleeping on the sidewalk.
In Mianyang, closer to the quake zone, a hospital moved patients into the square outside the rail station, setting up beds, medicine trays and tents.
The alarm compounded uneasiness in the region, which has been rumbled by dozens of aftershocks since the May 12 quake.
The Sichuan government said Tuesday the provincial death toll from the quake had reached nearly 40,000. Vice Governor Li Chengyun told a news conference in the provincial capital that there were 39,577 confirmed deaths and that another 236,359 people had been injured.
The toll was still expected to climb, as thousands more remained buried.
Rescuers pulled a 31-year-old man to safety Tuesday after he was trapped for more than a week in a flattened power plant near the epicenter of the earthquake in central China.
Ma Yuanjiang was saved from the debris of the Yingxiu Bay Hydropower Plant, where he worked as a director, after a 30-hour rescue effort, the official Xinhua News Agency said. Ma was able to speak after the rescue and began to eat small amounts of food, his colleague Wu Geng told Xinhua, but his exact condition was unknown.
It was the second case of someone being found alive a week after the May 12 earthquake struck Sichuan province. A miner, Peng Guohua, was in stable condition Tuesday after being trapped for 170 hours before his rescue Monday, Xinhua said.
Despite the tales of survival, rescue workers resumed the increasingly grim task of searching for bodies on the second day of a three-day national mourning period declared by the Chinese government, an unprecedented gesture to honor the dead whose numbers were expected to exceed 50,000.
Such official mourning periods have previously only been ordered for late national leaders.
During the three-day mourning period, flags were flying at half-staff and entertainment events have been canceled. CBS News reporter Celia Hatton said the Olympic torch relay has also been suspended.
Sky News correspondent Peter Sharp, reporting from the heart of the quake zone in Beichuan, said torrential rains were expected to begin falling on the region later Tuesday. The risk of mudslides from the expected deluge had prompted officials to call off the search effort and move workers to safer ground.
Further reflecting the shift away from rescue work to caring for survivors, Japanese Foreign Minister Masahiko Komura said a 23-member medical team will leave Tuesday for China. Japan already has a rescue team working in the disaster area.
China has said it would accept foreign medical teams and made an international appeal for tents to provide shelter for the coming rainy season.
Oil and gas operations in the region devastated by last week's earthquake in central China are virtually back to normal, state-owned oil and gas giant CNPC said Tuesday.
Meanwhile, China's banking regulators ordered banks to ensure adequate loans and other support for companies and individuals in the area.
Companies suffered $9.5 billion in damage in last week's quake in central China, the government said Monday.
Some 14,207 companies in Sichuan province and surrounding areas were damaged by the May 12 quake and 1,387 of their employees killed, a deputy industry minister, Xi Guohua, said at a news conference.
Independent estimates have put total losses at up to $20 billion after lost future output is taken into account.
Special stamps to help raise funds for earthquake victims went on sale Tuesday. Featuring three interlocking hearts on a red background, the stamp has a value of 1.20 yuan ($.17) but sells for 2.20 yuan ($.32).
China's official Xinhua News Agency said 13 million of the special stamps would be offered through June 20, with all proceeds donated to quake-hit areas.
The State Council, China's cabinet, said donations for disaster relief had reached 10.8 billion yuan ($1.5 billion).
The state-run China Daily warned Tuesday that citizens should be on guard against Internet fraud while donating to quake victims, saying they should be made only through official channels. Two people had been arrested in Guangdong province in southern China for setting up a fake donation Web site.
(© 2008 CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. The Associated Press contributed to this report.)
