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5 Million Are Left Homeless In Wake Of China Quake

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The Associated Press

Published: May 21, 2008

AN XIAN, China - China is grappling with the next massive task in the aftermath of its earthquake - how to shelter the 5 million people left homeless.

Many were living Tuesday in tent cities like one at the base of Qianfo mountain in the disaster zone, offering some stability - along with food and medical care - to those whose lives were upended.

"After the quake, we couldn't sleep for five days. We were really, really afraid," said Chen Shigui, 55, a weathered farmer who climbed for two days with his wife and injured father to reach the camp from their mountain village. "I felt relieved when we got here. It's much safer compared to my home."

But there's not enough room to go around.

The government issued an urgent appeal Tuesday for tents and brought in the first foreign teams of doctors and field hospitals, some of whom were swapping out with overseas search-and-rescue specialists. The switch underscored a shift in the response to China's worst disaster in three decades from emergency stage to recovery - and for many, enduring hardship.

On the second of a three-day national mourning period, the authoritarian government appeared to be moving to rein in the unusually free reporting it allowed in the disaster's first week. Most major newspapers carried on their front pages nearly identical photographs of President Hu Jintao and other senior leaders with their heads bowed - a uniformity that is typical when state media censors direct coverage.

The May 12 earthquake's confirmed death toll rose to more than 40,000, with at least 10,000 more deaths expected. Officials also said more than 32,000 people were missing. The State Council, China's Cabinet, said 80 percent of the bodies found in Sichuan province had been either cremated or buried.

Authorities rushed to dispose of corpses, burning them or laying them side by side in pits. Vice Minister for Civil Affairs Jiang Li said officials had begun collecting DNA samples from bodies so their identities could be confirmed later.

Rescues, which are becoming more remarkable by the hour, continued on the eighth day since the quake, but the trickle of earlier days had slowed to a drip.

A 60-year-old woman was pulled from the rubble of a collapsed temple in the city of Pengzhou about 195 hours after the quake, the state-run Xinhua news agency reported. Wang Youqun suffered only a hip fracture and bruises on her face during her eight days in the rubble, Hong Kong-based Phoenix Satellite Television reported, citing air force officer Xie Linglong.

Jiang said 5 million people were homeless and that the government was setting up temporary housing for victims unable to find shelter with relatives. He said nearly 280,000 tents had been shipped to the area and 700,000 more ordered and factories were gearing up to meet demand. Sichuan's governor said 3 million tents were needed.

In this encampment in An Xian, hundreds of large blue tents dot the flat farmland where rice and barley are being grown. The dried furrows provide orderly markers, lining up the temporary shelters with military precision in the fairly tidy area the size of a football field.

Some 4,600 people are being housed here, 90 percent of them from the mountains around Chaping village, about 20 miles away, which remains cut off by road, said camp director Yang Jianxin.

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