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Located just 80km from the epicentre of Monday's earthquake, Hongbai is one of the province's worst-hit mountain communities.
Few buildings are left standing in the township of 6,000 inhabitants. Officials here told The Sunday Times that some 700 residents were dead, 500 missing and more than 1,000 seriously injured.
The Singapore team, which includes 33 officers from the elite Disaster Assistance and Rescue Team (Dart), is here to assist in China's massive search and rescue effort. It arrived in Chengdu city on two SAF C-130 military aircraft on Friday evening.
The Singapore Civil Defence Force (SCDF) contingent is one of only four foreign rescue teams allowed into China. The others are from Japan, Russia, and South Korea.
Following an overnight drive from Chengdu city, and a three-hour rest stop in between, buses ferrying the 55 SCDF servicemen reached the disaster zone just after 7am yesterday.
The scene was grim. Rows of buildings and farmhouses had been flattened. Roads and bridges were fractured beyond repair. Work had ground to a halt at the township's cement plant and at the coal and phosphorous mines, in which most of its people work.
Once in town, the squad, led by Lieutenant-Colonel Francis Ng, moved quickly. The rescuers were racing against time to find survivors five days after the quake. There is a high chance of finding people still alive within 72 hours of a disaster. But beyond that, the probability drops dramatically.
First, the team spread out to assess the extent of the damage and areas in which victims could still be trapped.
Four rescue dogs travelling with the contingent also went to work.
Border collie dogs Charlie and Rocky, a labrador named Tommy, and Radja, a Belgian shepherd, sniffed out at least eight different spots during the day at which buildings had been reduced to rubble.
Residents told the rescuers where people might still be buried.
The canines are trained to bark when they find survivors. But they were silent during the first half of the day, as they nosed through mountains of wreckage.
Despite this, Dart rescuers carried out searches. Brick by brick, using small baskets and basins, the men removed small, broken pieces of rubble for hours.
Rescue operations are painstaking ones, Lt-Col Ng said.
'You have to be very patient,' he said. 'Search and rescue missions involve a lot of backbreaking manual work. Rubble has to be removed layer by layer.'
One search, which lasted for seven hours, proved his point.
Mr Zhong Xianzhu, 43, saw the SCDF servicemen walking through town yesterday afternoon and asked for help finding his elder sister who, he said, was trapped in her five-storey building.
Madam Zhong Xianqiong, 46, was in her second-storey flat watching TV on her sofa when the quake hit on Monday afternoon. Her son, Mr Xiao Zhigang, 22, was not at home at the time, and was desperate to find her.
At least two Dart teams of eight men each were deployed at the site. For seven hours from 10am, they patiently cleared the debris by hand. But by 5pm, they had seen no sign of the woman.
Mr Xiao said he was simply grateful that the Singapore rescuers had made an attempt. 'They risked their own lives, going into a dangerous building to help me,' he said.
The day dragged on. In the evening, at three more sites, three more bodies were found.
At 7pm, at a collapsed four-storey building, Tommy the labrador sniffed out something. The men followed his lead and dug down through the rubble.
After 11/2 hours, they pulled out the body of Madam Li Shujun, 51. Her husband, Mr Cai Yonglin, 54, had alerted rescuers that she could be trapped inside.
There was closure in seeing his wife's body, said Mr Cai, a worker at the township's phosphorous mine.
'I'm very grateful to the rescuers. I can give her a proper burial now,' he said.
At press time, the search for more missing people was continuing. The rescuers, said Lt-Col Ng, will be working overnight.
Mr Bob Tan, the press officer for the Dart team was quoted as saying: 'Miracles do happen, that's why we never give up hope.'
