This aerial photo shows buildings toppled down by a 6.5-magnitude earthquake at the quake’s epicenter in the town of Longtoushan in Ludian County of Zhaotong, southwest China’s Yunnan Province on Monday, Aug. 4, 2014.LUDIAN, China – The death toll in southern China’s earthquake jumped from 410 to 589 on Wednesday as search and rescue teams found scores more bodies while pushing into isolated mountain communities to clear debris from collapsed homes.
The Yunnan provincial government said more than 2,400 people were injured in Sunday’s 6.1 magnitude quake in the mountainous farming region of Ludian county – the country’s deadliest temblor in four years and its biggest test of emergency response under leader Xi Jinping.
At a makeshift headquarters in the forecourt of a cracked middle school in the worst-hit town of Longtoushan, a senior colonel in the People’s Liberation Army said there might still be hope to find survivors.
“There are a lot of people that we may never be able to dig out,” said Senior Col. Feng, who declined to give his full name because he was not an officially designated spokesman. “But there is still hope.”
Wednesday’s jump in the toll – from 410 late Tuesday – was due to rescuers arriving in places where they had previously been unable to contact anybody, in small farming villages built into the mountains above the main towns, said Feng, who is based in neighboring Sichuan province. There were reports of additional communities buried but still unreached by rescuers.