China earthquake: 50,000 may have died

A rapid response team and a consular officials were in Chengdu on Thursday, trying to find those still unaccounted for, but the Foreign Offices said it was not known how many independent travellers were in the region when the earthquake struck.

So far, the full extent of the damage inflicted by the earthquake, which measured a magnitude of 7.9, has not been assessed.

The Disaster Relief Headquarters of China's State Council said the final death toll could exceed 50,000, according to reports on state television.

The authorities said that another 30,000 troops will be deployed in Sichuan to reinforce the 50,000 already helping the relief operation. Although the chances of finding survivors are diminishing by the hour, the government vowed to continue the search.

"This is only a beginning of this battle, and a long way lies ahead of us," said Gao Qiang, the deputy health minister. "We will never give up hope. For every thread of hope, our efforts will increase a hundred fold. We will never give up."

Wen Jiabao, the prime minister, visited the wreckage of school in Sichuan where dozens of children died.

He thanked doctors and nurses for helping the injured and said: "The party and the government are grateful to you. The people need you. They see you as a relative."

I am speechless this has got to be the worst experiences for millions of people. I cant even imagine the catastrophe of it all. We must find away to help these victims in their time of need. I wish i could fly over there right know and help. God will be watching over them.

Nature strikes again. This is so unfortunate.

It's hard to fully comprehend a disaster of this magnitute. Nevertheless, it's important to keep this in the public's consciousness. Especially in a time where more news time is spent talkin about flag pins and orange juice.

Will so much damage to china, and all of these after shocks, it makes me wonder if this will affect the price of products here in America, considering a great deal of our goods are manufactured in china, there's no telling how this could affect our economy as well.

It is sad that over 50k people have died, but think about the population over there, im not saying there expendable but i think they r blowing that number out of proportion compared to Chinas vast number of people.

Political science:

No, dmass5 feel free to say they are expendable, they are to their own damn government.

Population science:
1) That's a drop in the bucket.
2) It's a start.
3) More to come.

Sad, I know, but the Earth cannot sustain the present global population growth, let alone handle EVERYONE having America's standard of living.

Gotta cut the numbers somewhere, and no one's volunteering, so let nature correct our blunder. It will happily, obviously.

After spending more than 13 years working in China(I am now in Vietnam) my heart goes out to the Chinese people. But why has America's response been so limited compared with other nations?

dmass5,
It is sad that the american population is about 1 fifth of the chinese's, so when the next disaster happened in your american, i hope the corpses can reach 1 fifth of the people died in china, i m not saying there expendable but i think they r blowing that number out of proportion compared to Americans vast number of people.

I can prove that our gaverment had try its best to rescue the survivors in this earthquake. it is wrong to say that our work it is delayed. we are not like your American .when the earthquake is happened our gaverment is trying its best to release the dying in this disaster. if you say the gaverment delayed the rescue work .why didn't give us any suggestions as soon as the earthquake happened? please don't say anything before you had already knoen the truth.