After eight hours of frantic worry, Ai Fumei finally managed to get news of her relatives in Wenchuan County, the epicenter of the deadly earthquake that rocked southwest China.

"My uncle fell off a ladder when he tried to pack up the tiles on the roof, which were falling down in the earthquake. He is in hospital, but as power in the county was cut, the doctor couldn't properly examine him," said Ai, who works in the northwestern Ningxia Hui Autonomous Region.

She received the news by way of a cousin in Henan, who told her the uncle's home now had cracks in the walls and the kitchen had collapsed.

The family was living outdoors, but 24-year-old Ai believed they were luckier than other villagers: her elder brother Ai Furong said that most of the earthen houses were demolished.

Ai's hometown was Wenchuan, which has a population of 116,000 and lies about 159 kilometers from Chengdu, provincial capital of Sichuan. She had found it impossible to contact her family phone or mobile phone, until in the evening, she received short massage from Ai Xiufang in Henan.

She was also unable to reach her mother in Chengdu until about 9:00 PM, when she heard that many other people were living outdoors, and her mother "planned to sleep on the grass in a park".

Bai Yang, 29, who works for an advertising company, was in Chengdu on business when the quake occurred.

"I was working in the exhibition center when all of a sudden, I heard noises from underground just like subway trains and seconds later I felt a tremor, said Bai.

"It was shaking so vehemently that we feared glass would fall." About 20 seconds later he realized it was an earthquake and rushed outside with his colleagues.

"Some balconies of old buildings collapsed," he said. "On the streets many people are sitting or lying on newspapers or blankets. Shops are closed. The price of a kebab has soared from 0.2 yuan to 2 yuan."

Bai was scheduled to return Beijing on Tuesday evening. "But I am not sure now whether my flight will take off."

A driver from the Sichuan provincial seismological bureau had been on the 312 national highway near the Wenchuan county when the tremor occurred.

"I heard someone calling 'earthquake' and felt my car swaying. Rocks rolled off the hills and dust darkened the sky," he recalled.

Bai Ruixue, a journalist in Beijing, said, "I still couldn't reach my parents in Mianyang." One person was confirmed killed in the city after a water tower collapsed.

She had spoken with her father about an hour after the catastrophe, but was cut off one minute later. "He told me that windows were all broken in our apartment, which is on the first floor," she said.

"My parents are old and where could they live now?" asked Bai Ruixue.

Xinhua reporters had attempted to go to Wenchuan, but were stopped at Dujiangyan city 100 kilometers away, where roads were blocked by rocks.

Communication links to the county are still cut, cell phone calls are met with the engaged tone.

Zhang Jun'an, vice chief executive officer of China Unicom, said two networks in Wenchuan were crippled. "The network in Chengdu is okay, but overloaded," he was quoted by CCTV as saying.

China Unicom's staff to Wenchuan was blocked in Dujiangyan as well.

Measuring 7.8 on the Richter Scale, the earthquake at 2:28 PM claimed more than 8,500 lives in Sichuan Province alone and injured hundreds. It is China's worst quake since 1976, when an earthquake in Tangshan, Hebei Province, killed 242,000 people.

"Although I won't sleep tonight, I feel some relief now," said Ai Fumei in Ningxia.

(Xinhua News Agency May 13, 2008)