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Dujiangyan Parents' Search for Child

We found Fu Guanyu and her husband Wang Wei as they clung frantically to the long arm of a Hitachi excavator as it rumbled through the city of Dujiangyan.They were crying and seemed to be trying to pull the heavy machine, as if they could make it move faster toward their home. Their six-story apartment building had collapsed in the earthquake. Their toddler son, Wang Zhilu, was buried under the debris along with his grandparents. Mrs Fu broke down as she told me she still had hope their son would be found alive.

This was the moment we first saw Wang Wei and Fu Guanyu, as they were begging the driver of an excavator to go to their house to try to rescue their son and his parents.

Photo by Andrea Hsu, NPR

MOM, PLEASE DON'T GO!

An hour or so later, the excavator was at work on the rubble that was the six story building where Wang Wei's parents lived.

Photo by Andrea Hsu, NPR

She had just left for work on Monday when the earthquake struck. She told me, sobbing, that the boy begged her before she left, "Mom, please don't go." The panicked couple led the excavator through this city of half a million. The Wang family said soldiers came quickly to help them on Monday after the quake hit but they had no heavy equipment. Now the equipment had arrived but couldn't get through the gate into the apartment complex without knocking it down. A local official phoned for permission, permission was granted-and the excavator made quick work of destroying the gate. Mrs Fu and Mr Wang rushed toward the remains of their building.

TOPPLING SIDEWAYS

The structure had toppled sideways and collapsed, pancaking on itself. No walls were standing-just massive slabs of masonry-rebar-and bricks-in a pile three stories deep. Mrs Fu trembled and wept as she watched the claw lift huge pieces of the building aside so workers could get toward the interior. She told me she had climbed up on the rubble pile three times since Monday, calling for her son. When the excavator finished clearing some of the largest pieces, she and her husband clambered up the debris pile, calling out the boy's name- "Wang!," she cried in a trembling voice. "Mom is coming for you!"

But the utter devastation of this building, with no air pockets visible, left little hope that anyone inside could have survived. A long wait began. Eventually, enough rubble was cleared that a woman's hand became visible emerging from the debris, a thin band on the right ring finger. Another family climbed up and made the painful realization that they recognized the ring. The stench of death started to fill the courtyard.

HOPE SEEMS TO DRAIN

With some bodies now found, the military was called in. Soon, about three dozen military police arrived in green camouflage fatigues and black rubber boots but with no supplies or equipment.. Mrs. Fu and Mr. Wang ran out to buy them cotton gloves and white cotton face masks. Other neighbors brought shovels. Friends brought out a white sheet and told Mrs. Fu they hoped her son and his grandparents would be found alive but just in case, they would tear this sheet into pieces so they could cover the victims' faces.

And as the day dragged on, any hope seemed to drain from the parents' faces. The couple began sobbing, holding each other tight. "I should have brought him with me to work," Mrs. Fu wailed, as she sagged into her husband's embrace. "He didn't want me to leave him!" Local officials arrived to tell the family that if the bodies were found, they would be taken away for quick cremation out of fear that disease would spread. But there are so many bodies in this badly-hit city that the local authorities are overwhelmed. Mrs. Fu and Mr. Wang settled in for a long wait. Friends came with bags holding paper money, incense, and firecrackers. The paper money would be burned for the victims to use in the afterlife; the firecrackers would ward off evil spirits. In the meantime, waiting. And hoping against all hope.

Wang Wei and Fu Guanyu, grieving the -- at that moment -- presumed loss of his parents and their son.

Photo by Andrea Hsu, NPR

At 4:40 in the afternoon, a worker came out and said, "we've found a child.". The parents went limp. "Was he about two, wearing a striped shirt?," the mother cried. The worker nodded. The parents, along with aunts and uncles, sobbed and clutched each other tight. The mother cried out to the worker through her tears one last desperate appeal, "Did you call out to him? Maybe he had just fainted."

Wang Zhilu, two months shy of his second birthday, was found in the arms of his grandfather, with his grandmother holding onto her husband from behind. All three were dead - three among what are likely to be tens of thousands of people who perished in Monday's earthquake.

-- Melissa Block