Free Web NovelChapter 357: Chapter 288: This is Beichuan
When he came out, Captain Hu of the Southwest Training Team pulled Fang Huai aside and inquired about the equipment they had brought.
The equipment they had with them had almost all broken down in the past two days; out of the two hydraulic breaching toolkits, only the engines were still working.
Fang Huai and his team hadn’t brought much heavy equipment, but they had brought almost all the personal gear they could carry in the vehicles of the two squadrons, and there was quite a lot of it.
Captain Hu borrowed two rescue jacks from him.
Fang Huai knew they had a heavy workload and agreed but couldn’t help asking with curiosity, "How did you manage to bring in two engines?"
Captain Hu gave a mysterious smile and patted Fang Huai’s shoulder:
"When you join the training team, you’ll be taught."
Fang Huai curled his lips in his mind.
You’re acting like a foreign guest here, as if the training team is something special. When I get there, I’ll kick your shop around.
...
The equipment was lent out.
When the people from the Special Duty Team heard that the Southwest Training Team had arrived, they also looked them over for quite a while. freēwēbηovel.c૦m
Curious but with a hint of non-acceptance.
The only exception was He Zhijun who, upon seeing Captain Hu again, shook hands with him and exchanged warm greetings for a while.
However, Captain Hu seemed to look down on He Zhijun, expressing his disappointment that as a graduate of the training team, he hadn’t managed to secure the position of vice-captain of the Explosion Assault Team.
It was evident that He Zhijun was feeling very frustrated.
Fang Huai had explained to everyone the causes and consequences of the situation at Tangjia Mountain, which he had managed to handle using his brains and geographical knowledge, not his strong suit.
Let alone geographical knowledge, if you asked him to name the 34 provincial administrative regions of China, he could barely reach the twenty-fifth before he would start going back and forth in confusion.
He hadn’t even graduated from his higher vocational education at the electric university, where he was studying hotel management, purely for the sake of obtaining a formal qualification...
Honestly, given He Zhijun’s tough image in the whole corps, the idea that he studied hotel management in higher vocational education would probably make many people roll on the floor laughing.
When Captain Hu left, Fang Huai also received some information: the second phase of the training in the Southwest Training Team would be postponed due to the earthquake, and the third phase might start in the hottest part of July and end in early August.
Fang Huai couldn’t help but look up at the stifling heat beginning to emanate from the Beichuan sun in mid-May and remembered the furnace that was Chongqing, starting to regret his decision.
He had spoken of going back and taking the opportunity to enjoy a few hotpot meals.
Now, the weather in Chongqing during July and August was practically like the outdoor unit of an air conditioner for the Southwest region, let alone eating hotpot; he feared that even sitting at the Riverside Square eating shaved ice, he would complain that the bench was too hot.
Fang Huai’s resistance in all aspects was extremely high, unnaturally so, but strangely, his taste buds were perfectly preserved by the system. After eating something exceptionally spicy, he would still break out in sweat on his forehead and feel hot all over.
However, the hotpots of Chongqing, warming in winter and reducing internal heat in summer, were something he had to respect with a meal if he could get leave.
If that wasn’t possible, he would just have to down a couple of bottles of Huoxiang Zhengqi Water afterward.
...
Beichuan, with the infusion of this new lifeblood, commenced a new search and rescue operation.
Each group had to be led by an old soldier with considerable experience and was allocated soldiers of the People’s Liberation Army, more or fewer depending on the likelihood of survivors at the search location.
Fang Huai led one team, including Hu Hongzhi and Zhang Yang, and took 20 soldiers of the People’s Liberation Army to the vital vegetable market.
The primary concern in this search and rescue operation was to avoid disturbances.
With buildings on fire, the city’s water supply was barely enough to drink, and now the sewage treatment plant’s pipes were all busted, the water bureau had collapsed, and before supplies arrived, some soldiers had to rely on distillation for drinking water, obviously leaving no water to fight fires.
But when they saw them approaching the burning buildings, people were so panicked that they almost knelt down.
Buried inside were their relatives, passbooks, gold, silver, money, and other things like real estate certificates which they were uncertain still had any value.
The special duty officers and soldiers had brought some dry powder fire extinguishing bombs used for forest fires, but if the powder couldn’t reach the source of the fire, it was virtually useless.
And there were people in front of every building, and the locals along the way pleaded with them in various ways to save lives: offering cigarettes, water, food, and some even offered money.
These days, the civilians had realized that to rescue anyone from structurally complicated floors, the men in orange clothing had to be called upon.
People could only scold them firmly for a few sentences and then helplessly look around, searching for idle bystanders to gather and enquire about the conditions of the nearby buildings over the past few days. If there were any real chances of saving people, they would organize everyone to remove the removable floor slabs and shout out.
In a small county with tens of thousands of residents, with nearly half of the population buried, there was no need for the locals to point out where people were trapped, they could smell it. frёeωebɳovel.com
That smell, even through two masks, was inescapable; it was foul, burnt, and worst of all, it had a slight sweetness that was utterly unbearable because of the aftertaste.
This odor had already caused some of the search and rescue dogs to lose their sense of smell.
Passing without focus was one thing, but once their minds sank into the rescue, that smell began to amplify.
What they were searching for wasn’t just any person; it had to be a survivor.
Many of the deceased had already been spotted but were turning blue, with several steel bars impaled through them, lying beneath giant crossbeams that not even an ordinary crane could possibly lift, not workable horizontally or vertically. How to dig?
They could only drive the nearby people away, set up a cordon, and try to prevent others from coming close, avoiding leaving them with more shadows.
These soldiers had grown up without seeing many corpses, but the children here, their faces gray and marked by deep tear stains, had become numb to the sight of dead bodies.
Along the way, the most common expression they encountered was crying, followed by numbness. The soldiers understood all too well—thinking too much would inevitably lead to thinking of their own families, friends, classmates, even their long-gone elementary school homeroom teachers. If this had been their hometown, they would all probably be buried underneath.
One could only imagine how much pain the surrounding people were in.
The greatest humanitarian care in China is the Confucian idea of "to extend to others the care you give to your own elders and children."
The greatest vulnerability and strength lie in empathy.
They couldn’t afford to think, for to think would bring tears.
If the soldiers of the People’s Liberation Army started crying, the entire city would become a river of tears.
They chose to be numb.
"Zhang Huifang!"
"Wenwen..."
"Zhou Wenquan!"
Hearing the cries of those searching for their loved ones in the streets and seeing the vegetable market covered with large plastic tents, Fang Huai’s most vulnerable tear ducts could no longer hold back. Fortunately, his face mask provided some cover, allowing him to quickly regain his composure and resume rescue mode after wiping his eyes.
"Take down those tents before we search!" Fang Huai ordered, pointing to the plastic shelters, and then took the lead entering the pile of rubble and debris.
The vegetable market was situated in a recess on the street, adjacent to several residential buildings. Now one could barely make out the foundations, but the stairs stretched across this spot, covering it entirely. It was hard to imagine how the building a few meters away had collapsed onto the market. Anyway, I heard that an entire kindergarten building was pushed forward by the earthquake about 20 meters before it fell.
However, the plastic tents partly entangled in bricks, partly resting on tiles, half-concealed the area.
There were also quite a few people waiting here for their relatives. As they saw the group starting to work, a crowd of mostly men rushed forward, eager to share their stories.
"My daughter-in-law, she came here with the kid to shop, and now she’s missing..."
"My mother said she wanted to cook fish that afternoon..."
"My aunt... she’s the only one I have left. Please, help me look for her, look for her..."
Who says men aren’t fragile? One by one, they wept uncontrollably.
Some, certain they had lost their immediate family members, yearned to find someone close to them through their bloodline. That way, when they remembered their lost kin in the future, they wouldn’t be alone. There would still be someone to reminisce about.
It would leave some warmth in their lives, preventing their emotions from becoming completely numb.
"Stop yelling, don’t come closer! If we find anyone, we will save them!"
Fang Huai steadied the numbness within him and, suppressing his emotions, shouted loudly while leading everyone to quickly tear open the awning and throw it onto the street. Only after letting some of the smell inside dissipate did they begin their search and rescue efforts.
There were traces of a previous search.
Some bricks still bore bloodstains, but the people were gone.
Search and rescue had been chaotic in the past few days, and it wasn’t clear whether it was the troops or residents who had conducted the search.
But it weighed heavy on their hearts nonetheless.
Hope for miracles in places already searched was now slim.
Yet, the task of retrieving bodies was surprisingly simple, taking just twenty minutes before discoveries began to be made.
The first to be unearthed was a chubby man, naked except for an apron he was wearing.
Hearing the shout "We’ve found someone!", Fang Huai rushed forward to see the man lying on the ground with his eyes wide open and mouth half-agape, appearing to have been suffocated to death.
There was also a woman nearby, her head now visible.
Fang Huai called out to two soldiers of the People’s Liberation Army, "Find a cloth and take two door panels from the building next door to carry the bodies!"
The state of the bodies was too grotesque; tongues sticking out, bare stomachs visibly bloated. Staring any longer would surely deprive one of sleep.
The surrounding soldiers didn’t want to make eye contact and turned to uncover the body of an aunt whose condition seemed more bearable.
Rigor mortis had set in, which meant she hadn’t been dead for long.
The real fear was encountering bodies that had already started to decompose.
This was the big problem they would face over the next three days: after more than three days, the microbes within the bodies breaking down the internal organs and flesh would produce gases, leading to bloating and creating a "giant appearance" or even "exploding like a whale."
This condition had become increasingly severe over the last two days, so nobody really wanted to handle the bodies.
But on their way here, Fang Huai had been mentally preparing everyone.
When finding the deceased, they had to be carried out—one step at a time, cleared up, to make way for finding the living.
"Saving one person means saving an entire family," Fang Huai murmured once more. Those around him, upon hearing this, quickened their pace significantly.
Here, only love could conquer fear.
...
That afternoon, twelve bodies were recovered.
They added to the already difficult task of the troops responsible for the burials.
At 5:50 pm, someone came to notify them to assemble.
The command at Riverside Square strictly mandated gathering there at 12 o’clock and 6 o’clock to rest for half an hour and eat.
Because there had been too many people in need of rescue in the previous days, and cries for help could be heard everywhere, if the troops had to skip meals whenever someone needed help, they would have neither the time to eat nor the strength to continue rescuing.
But starting from yesterday, the rule had changed; finding a survivor could postpone mealtime.
Fang Huai hadn’t found any survivors, so he had to go and eat.
Among the team, there was now a tall boy named Yang Xianming.
He had argued with his mother over his unwillingness to cook due to his fondness for the internet. In a huff, he left home to sulk on a nearby open ground. When the earthquake struck, he escaped and spent the night at a gas station outside the county. His parents made a living by selling vegetables, and he had come many times over the past few days to look for them, his feet had been worn bloody.
He should have been resting at the gas station at noon, but when he heard that someone was digging through the vegetable market, he came back to help excavate with everyone.
A teenage boy, undaunted by fear for his parents’ sake, had, in his quest for them, already unearthed several other people’s parents from the market.
Everyone was deeply moved by his story, and they specially assigned a few people to prioritize searching around his family’s vegetable stall.
Unfortunately, there was no one there. In a disaster, people certainly would not stay still.
All afternoon with people helping, they still couldn’t find them.
All they could do was take him to eat.
Yang Xianming was very distressed.
Sadness and regret filled his gaze as he looked back three steps at a time toward the vegetable market.
"Maybe they’re hidden in a corner, still..."
Everyone wanted to comfort him, to say "maybe they’re still alive," but they hardly dared to speak.
Seeing the boy, he had already come to terms with his parents’ death. To give him another hope and then shatter it would be another blow.
In this place, there was so little hope that people dared not utter comforting words.
Unlike Hanwang, this was the even crueler Beichuan.
