Alarm as cracks appear in earthquake dams

The death toll from China's strongest earthquake in more than half a century rose to nearly 20,000 today, as thousands of Chinese troops rushed to shore up "extremely dangerous" cracks in a dam strained to bursting point.

Many of the dead are buried beneath what remains of Hanwang in the Mianyang area of Sichuan Province. There are bodies wherever you turn, some wrapped in blue plastic, some carried on the back of tricycles, some lying unclaimed until there is time to deal with them.

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Many survivors are worried about flooding – the area is home to thousands of dams, ranging from small local dams to the world's biggest dam, the Three Gorges , which officials said was not damaged by the quake. Thousands of Chinese soldiers have been mobilised to repair cracks in the Zipingpu Dam, upriver from Dujiangyan. Nearly 400 dams have been damaged by the quake.

Mountains separate Hanwang from Wenchuan county, the epicentre of the quake, which is still cut off after Monday's 7.9 magnitude quake and where many thousands are feared dead. Soldiers who parachuted in to the county said four villages had been overwhelmed by landslides after the quake.

China's premier, Wen Jiabao, who has travelled to many of the worst-affected areas, flew to Wenchuan by helicopter to offer support to isolated communities.

In Hanwang, a woman pummelled her fists against a soldier's chest as his team of rescue workers tried to move on to the next search mission. The army realises that time is of the essence in its mission to find survivors among the 19,000 feared buried beneath the rubble of the town, just 50 kilometres from the quake epicentre.

Coaches, ambulances and army lorries ferried into town thousands of rescuers, including teams of volunteers from the provincial capital, Chengdu, and relatives from all over China. They are working flat out to find survivors but there are ever fewer emerging from the twisted metal and concrete debris.

"I can hear him crying in there. You have to help," said a woman kneeling in front of a crane, forcing it to stop, telling the driver not to pass until he had cleared the heaviest debris of her home, where her husband was buried. After frenzied negotiation, the crane removed some large slabs, but then drove on, saying he had to help clear a site where hundreds were buried. Another excavator arrived later, but by then the woman had recovered her husband's body.

In every town, temporary shelters have been set up, using red, white and blue tarpaulin or, in some cases, advertising hoardings or political banners cut down from the roadside.

"Our house was completely destroyed so we borrowed some tarpaulin to set up here," said one man in Mianzhu city. "We just went ahead and did it; the government is busy. We've been lucky, all the family is alive."

The grounds around the Second People's Hospital in Deyang city have been transformed into a huge outdoor hospital, with thousands of injured lying on makeshift beds in blue tents.

Fu Xingyen, 33, from Mianzhu, was sitting up in bed on the grass, her face badly cut. "The roof fell on me. But I'm OK. And I'm the only one in my family who is hurt; everyone else is OK," she said.

There were still miracles in evidence. A 34-year-old woman who was eight months pregnant was rescued after spending 50 hours under debris in Dujiangyan, the centre of relief operations where hundreds of schoolchildren died when the Juyuan Middle School collapsed. And in the Beichuan region, a three-year-old girl was pulled to safety after being trapped for more than 40 hours under the bodies of her parents, according to the Xinhua news agency.

Wang Zhenyao, director of the disaster relief department at the Ministry of Civil Affairs, said: "Our top task now is to save lives, as many as possible. It is not the time to talk about giving up."