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PACKED TIGHT: With their homes reduced to rubble, hundreds took temporary shelter at the Jiuzhou gymnasium in Mianyang on Wednesday. -- PHOTO: AP
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BEICHUAN - A DAY past what experts call the critical three-day window for finding buried survivors alive, rescuers here pulled more than 30 people alive from the rubble yesterday.
Among them were a 50-year-old worker at a fertiliser plant and three primary school girls buried under the ruins of their school.
Mr Liu Deyun was pulled to safety exactly 100 hours after the 7.9-magnitude quake struck Sichuan province on Monday.
He paid a high price for his life, although it was not immediately clear which of his legs and arms were cut off to free him from the rubble.
The decision to amputate had been approved by his desperate family.
'I just want him to live,' said his daughter Liu Yuan, 23.
Mr Liu was missing until Thursday night, when searching relatives heard him crying out from under the building, part of a sprawling fertiliser plant in Yinghua township of Beichuan county.
'I was calling out: 'Father! Father!' And he responded: 'Yes',' his daughter said.
'He said: 'I'm thirsty,' and I yelled back: 'Father don't talk! You need your air! I will go and find somebody to rescue you!'
Mr Liu was pulled to safety at around 6.30pm.
Hours earlier, at 4.36 am yesterday, soldiers pulled out 10-year-old Jiang Yuqi 86 hours after she was trapped.
Conscious and talking, she later received medication for a broken foot.
Within six minutes of her rescue, classmates Wei Xinyu and Wang Jingyang emerged from the rubble to cheers from soldiers and medical personnel.
The three girls were discovered two days ago by a sniffer dog.
They survived the ordeal because they were able to receive water after rescuers drilled holes through the collapsed ceiling above them.
They will likely be the last survivors from the Maoba middle school, rescue workers said, estimating that 2,000 children and teachers may have been killed in three adjacent schools at the site in Beichuan, one of the areas worst hit by the quake.
The three girls were smart and lucky to have survived, said a soldier who gave his name as Chen.
They may have got under tables to survive the collapsed walls which killed 60 other students in the class, he said.
The girls showed 'amazing resilience and strength', said Dr Zhang Chao.
Rescuers yesterday also found two people who had been buried together for 95 hours in the ruins of an office building and a 23-year-old nurse pinned under the rubble of a hospital.
No additional information about them was immediately available.
China put the death toll at just over 22,000 yesterday but has said it expects it to exceed 50,000. About 4.8 million people have lost their homes.
BLOOMBERG, AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE, XINHUA
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