Free Web NovelChapter 358: Chapter 289: The Sound in The Late Night
In the twilight at Riverside Square.
The surrounding scenery, buildings, and details all brought back memories of 2008 and would remain frozen in that year.
The buildings with old-fashioned neon lights, the vaguely visible barbecues on the streetside ruins, the hair salon signage—just one week prior, this place must have been bustling at night.
Along the road, broken floors of buildings still sported huge billboards.
There were 88 days left until the opening of the BJ Olympics.
On the ground lay an unclaimed pink plastic hairband adorned with a recently popular Pleasant Goat character; the hairband was slightly curled, unknowingly symbolizing the demise of a young girl’s life.
With the addition of 800 soldiers, the government’s work had begun to show results; at this moment, there were several distribution points for supplies on the square, where soldiers were handing out bread, bottled water, biscuits, and instant noodles.
The supplies and rations brought by the Explosion Assault Team accompanying the army also made the distribution of supplies this afternoon a bit more plentiful.
During these days, most of the supplies came from a "Tops & Pots" supermarket at the epicenter that had not collapsed; the shelves and storage of goods at the supermarket had been lifesaving just two days before the earthquake.
In addition to saving some from the ruins, the government had planned and distributed the supplies on a limited basis, managing to maintain them until today.
Of course, there were also airdrops.
Without prior notice, the twinkling mist in the sky was the signal of an airdrop.
At noon today, transport planes from the Chengdu Military Region airdropped 18 boxes of supplies, but only 13 boxes were recovered; some had drifted into deep mountain hollows, completely losing track of them.
In the midst of rush repairs to the access roads, when temporarily undamaged sections allowed brief passage, some supplies were brought in, as well as what various troops had brought with them.
The issues of food for the locals were resolved to a limited extent through various channels.
But the "meals" for the soldiers were truly disheartening.
Each soldier from the 13th Army had a ham sausage and a bottle of water. Other troops, lacking ham sandwiches, were given a small bread, or plain noodles.
The caloric content of the food was roughly the same.
Here, the precise division of calories within these convenient foods was not for the purpose of dieting, but to ensure that each person maintained a good state of survival.
Fang Huai and the others collected some simple food and then began looking for their comrades to inquire about the situation.
It was relatively easy to locate the Fire Brigade; gathering in groups, they used this brief and limited time to have an "on-site meeting."
A genuine large-scale rescue site meeting, where every individual listened earnestly to others share their rescue experiences, because it was likely they could use that knowledge in just a bit.
Here, whether veterans or new recruits, as long as they arrived, each person was part of the assault team with their role to play.
Disasters truly hone the troops, forging a group of determined old soldiers.
For Firefighting, its significance was even greater.
Most people in that gathering of Firefighters were listening to Captain Hu "lecture"; after all, with such a prominent reputation, it was a rare opportunity.
"In the case of a massive earthquake like this, our traditional thinking about the triangle of life, safe corners, must be abandoned. There are too many and varied factors that can destroy what we call a safe triangle.
Also, during lifting operations, it is imperative to avoid unclear lifting signals and collisions with the load. This afternoon, in our rescue efforts at the kindergarten..."
Captain Hu was really throwing out the bait to get everyone to share their shortcomings encountered during the rescue process.
In just these few days, in this county alone, there were over a thousand rescue cases; everyone, to a greater or lesser extent—even the relatively professional Fire Brigade—encountered some rescues that were not timely, or even rescue efforts that failed.
A mistake might lead to an injury or even a life lost.
Some mistakes, in fact, could have been avoided. Those who erred were often too embarrassed to speak up, and those involved in fatalities were fearful even to mention them, feeling as if they had taken lives.
Some soldiers refused to rescue alone, largely due to this reason; hence, in the early stages of the rescue, many places had large crowds squished together. Yet when the severely injured were finally uncovered—those with rebar through them, those trapped in complex situations—no one dared to act, resulting in low rescue efficiency.
Everyone understood the principle well: if you don’t save him, he’s definitely going to die, but who would want him to die by their own hand?
What if someone else could rescue him better?
Actual rescue conditions on-site could produce five, six, seven, eight kinds of fatal circumstances: suffocation, impalement, severe blood loss, violent collisions, secondary collapses, alternating heavy object pressure, lifting one causing another to fall, suspended loads suddenly dropping... too many to count, touching anything could be lethal.
A sense of powerlessness didn’t require complicated circumstances.
Beginning at 8 a.m. on the 13th, a student was trapped under the heaviest beam in a middle school. Two cranes were brought over in succession to lift it, but both failed; the operation with one crane was nearly disastrous.
After hours of continuous rescue effort, realizing rescue workers couldn’t manage, the student, who was in relatively good condition, requested amputation as a means of escape.
However, only the area above his heart was exposed; the rest of his body was firmly pinned down, making amputation impossible. Without necessary medications and equipment, the doctors couldn’t operate.
Laters, more than thirty people surrounded the student, including his mother, but everyone helplessly watched as he went from spirited to unable to speak, and then to passing away.
At 7 p.m., doctors diagnosed that the boy had lost vital signs, and rescue efforts were officially abandoned.
His mother sat there, discarding the umbrella that had shielded him from the wind and rain, and then from the sun when it cleared.
She didn’t cry, just sat there, staring at her son.
But others couldn’t stand it and cried.
At the beginning, there was water, food, the ability to communicate, good vital signs, and the will to survive—he seemingly had all the conditions necessary for survival, yet he didn’t make it.
Not to speak of the parents, what sort of impact did this have on the morale of the soldiers actively involved in the rescue?
Actual rescue operations went beyond all guidelines.
Communicating timely with trapped people, calming their mentality, enhancing their will to survive—all of it was nonsense.
Here, everyone even avoided speaking with those whose chances of survival were low, silently carrying out their rescue.
Just fearing that if they died, before death, they may have spoken a lot with them, acting sensibly, even comforting them amidst the chaos, telling them not to panic, to take it slow.
If those people eventually died, it really felt like it could snatch away one’s soul, haunting them for days, even years, with visions of them talking.
Fang Huai listened to everyone discussing the lessons of failure and became lost in his own memories.
Of course, there were also some good news.
This afternoon, two groups from the Guiyang Special Duty who went out for search and rescue did not come back for the meal.
Not coming back for the meal meant that they had found survivors.
Captain Hu led a team to the kindergarten and also rescued people.
This team’s combat power was exceptionally strong, and their coordination ability was highly effective. Using jacks and crowbars, forty-something people managed to lift a massive concrete column that even a crane couldn’t lift, creating a gap 50 centimeters wide. Two soldiers quickly crawled in, and in the buried space, they swept out more than a dozen children along with stones.
Four of them were alive.
They have already been carried out by the soldiers through Nanshankou, filled with colossal rocks, to seek the road construction team outside and asked them to send a vehicle to the city for rescue.
This news undoubtedly brought a huge encouragement to everyone, and they started to divide the work, trying to concentrate on overcoming some of the previously insurmountable buried areas.
At 6:30, the break ended, and Command distributed the collected flashlights to the Fire Brigade and Earthquake Rescue Team. Without flashlights and with the generator still not in place, the troops had to rest in tents outside the city by eight o’clock to prevent further injuries from aftershocks in case of landslides without visible conditions.
Here, being surrounded by mountains on three sides, the power of aftershocks was almost doubled. Several major aftershocks resulted in more or less casualties and even fatalities.
Of course, having a flashlight also came with its own pressure. Even if they found someone, the conditions were often complicated, and they dared not start work until morning. The efficiency of night search and rescue was extremely low, but it was all about making an "effort."
...
The night deepened, the cicada’s cries rose with the evening, then waned. Just a moment ago, they had cried out for a while, but now it was too late and entirely silent.
"Dada dada dada..."
"Thud, thud."
The surrounding quieted down, and the sound of machinery repairing roads outside the city became more apparent. freewёbnoνel.com
"Is anyone there?"
"Anyone?"
Fang Huai took advantage of this quiet to lead his group in clearing and calling out by the vegetable market until past eleven o’clock.
The little boy following them, Yang Xianming, tirelessly shouted for his parents amidst the ruins.
As he kept shouting, he became angrier and started calling their full names:
"Yang Bin! Wu Mingjun!"
Louder and angrier, he even started calling out nicknames:
"Pockmarked Yang!"
Seeing how his shouts grew more vigorous, Fang Huai couldn’t help but feel like he was looking at himself when he was a child.
Back then, when his parents were occasionally too busy with making a living to look after him, he grew bolder with time. But this was a much sadder story because he didn’t just lose their supervision; he lost his parents.
Quiet times were actually good for search and rescue.
"Help..."
A woman’s voice, very faint.
Everyone present nearly all heard it and started searching for the direction of the voice.
"It seems... it’s right below me," Zhang Yang said, somewhat uncertain.
He quickly stepped back.
Fang Huai shone his flashlight there and saw a gap between two beams underneath a pile of rubble.
Fang Huai and Hu Hongzhi both went nearby to observe.
"It really could be! This is the only place with a gap for air! Even if it’s not the right spot, she must be in the space below. The voice is coming from here."
"Dig, dig, dig! Chen Wu, go out and find someone to borrow two flashlights for me!"
Fang Huai immediately issued the order to a soldier of the People’s Liberation Army whose name he knew.
A first-class soldier immediately looked startled, pointed at himself, and asked, "Me?"
As he spoke, he looked around at the pitch-black surroundings and swallowed hard.
Fang Huai chuckled and said, "What’s the matter, scared of ghosts?"
The people around also laughed.
"During the day, when he had to lift the fat one, he was afraid to do it; he’s definitely scared!"
"Chen Wu, don’t wimp out, make your old comrades proud!"
Search and rescue at night had this advantage; people could talk freely without worrying about upsetting the displaced people.
To tell the truth, in this environment with cold winds in every direction, if people didn’t talk and lighten the mood, scenes from the ghost movies they saw as children would uncontrollably pop into their heads.
"I... am scared of nothing!" Chen Wu toughened up and then pointed "accidentally" at a First-class soldier, saying:
"Zhou Shiqiang, come with me!"
The pointed First-class soldier stood up, his expression speechless, and said, "Squad leader, why is it that whenever there’s something to do, you think of me?"
Chen Wu argued confidently, "Who gave you socks when all of yours were worn out during your first year? And who gave you your first cigarette? Remember how good I’ve been to you?"
The First-class soldier stood up, cursing as he walked out.
"For a cigarette, I might have to give you my life one day!"
