Day After Earthquake, the Search for Survivors

May 13, 2008— -- Across southwest China this morning they are counting their dead, while still searching for the living, the day after a 7.9-magnitude earthquake struck Sichuan province.

Nearly 12,000 people are believed to have perished. But in the midst of so much tragedy, searchers found at least one reason for hope: a little girl was pulled out alive from the rubble of what used to be her school.

There may be thousands like her -- trapped under collapsed schools, houses, even hospitals -- waiting to be rescued.

Just hours ago, ABC's Stephanie Sy got to a village in one of the hardest hit areas near Chongqing. In Pyongpang, a rural village 230 miles from the epicenter, the earthquake hit while children were in school.

"We found a primary school that had been completely devastated," Sy said. "It was like a tornado had targeted this school building.

"They haven't experienced an earthquake in this area," Sy said. "So [the teachers] told the kids to just stay where they were, and then, as the earth started shaking more, they told the kids to run out of the class. And as the kids were running out, the school started collapsing. Four of the children were crushed beneath the rubble and died, and dozens of other kids were injured and had to be taken to the hospital. But there were many other kids that were able to escape -- they had just enough time to run out into the playground."

The two main buildings of the school were destroyed, although surrounding buildings were unharmed.

Melissa Block, co-host of NPR's "All Things Considered," was on assignment in the area when the earthquake struck in the middle of the afternoon.

"What's going on? The whole building is shaking," she said as the earthquake struck. "The whole building is shaking. My goodness. We're in the middle of an earthquake. The whole block is shaking."

It was a moment also captured in grainy images of a man riding out the quake under his desk.

"The top of the church is falling down, and all the people are running out into the street," Block said. "As we're standing here, birds are flying, and the ground is undulating under my feet. The cross on the top of the church is waving wildly, and bricks are falling off of the ceiling, of the roof."

By nightfall, China's Prime Minister Wen Jiabao was rushed to the scene, bullhorn in hand. "Hang on," he called. "The army is on the way."

An army of rescue teams and their dogs are now flooding the quake zone, which is a mountainous region best known, until today, for its huge Panda Research Center.

Through the night, it was as if the entire region was suddenly homeless.

"A lot of people choose to stay outside and they're putting their tent and blanket on the grass and they're going to spend [the night] over there," Summer Jiang, an Operation Blessing humanitarian aid worker said. "And even people are staying, like me, still [keeping] awake because it's really scary."