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Aid is starting to reach people in a remote corner of northwest China near Tibet. The death toll from yesterday’s earthquake there has risen to more than 750. Authorities are struggling to help the thousands spending another night out in the cold. Marco Werman gets a firsthand account from an American man living in the hard hit town of Jiegu.

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MARCO WERMAN:  I’m Marco Werman and this is The World.  Aid is starting to reach people in a remote corner of northwest China near Tibet.  The death toll from yesterday’s earthquake there has risen to more than 750.  Authorities are struggling to help the thousands spending another night out in the cold.  A Chinese disaster relief official in Beijing said there is a shortage of tents, clothing and bedding.  Meanwhile survivors in the town of Jiegu search for the missing.  This man is looking for his younger brother.

INTERPRETER:  I just hope I can find him but I have no clue where he is.  There was a hotel here.  We haven’t seen anyone come out.  Everyone who was in there was bound to have been crushed to death.  We are devastated.

WERMAN: Earlier today we spoke with an American in Jiegu.  Jamin, who didn’t want to give his last name, has lived in China for eight years.  He was in his apartment in Jiegu when the quake hit.

JAMIN:  It was loud, with the sound of breaking brick, bending metal, breaking glass and so that’s when we determined that we need to get out of our apartment as quickly as possible.  So we have two small children, both under the age of three and so we grabbed both of them, some coats and a little bit of money and just ran out.  We didn’t even close our apartment door.

WERMAN: When you got down to the streets, how many other people, families were out there?

JAMIN:  When we first got out there, there were only a few dozen people out there.  But over the next 10 or 15 minutes, there were hundreds, thousands of people out on the streets and that’s when we began hearing people scream, people crying out for loved ones that were trapped, people who had been seriously injured and people weeping for people who had died.

WERMAN: Tell me about the buildings there in Jiegu.  What’s the housing stock like?

JAMIN:  Well Jiegu is a very Tibetan town.  It has around 90,000 to 100,000 residents and about 85% of the people are Tibetan.  Tibetan people normally live in one or two story mud/brick traditional style homes.

WERMAN: Right, presumably not very earthquake friendly.

JAMIN:  No, absolutely not.

WERMAN: So presumably you don’t go back into your residence after an earthquake like that.  Where did you and everybody else out in the streets go at that point?

JAMIN:  Yeah, that’s a good question.  We didn’t know where to go.  And then the government instructed everybody to move out west about three miles to where there is a big open grassland area where they host the annual horse festival each year.  And so there’s a big open area with no buildings or anything out there.  So then we went out there.

WERMAN: Did you stay there overnight?

JAMIN:  We didn’t.  We were trying to get a report on what the road conditions were like and finally after we had been there for about seven or eight hours, we heard that the roads leading north to the provincial capital city of Shening were all clear.  Then we drove about seven hours to a small town and we stayed the night there.

WERMAN: So Jamin, you’re now in the provincial capital Shening.  I’m wondering if you can tell us what you’re hearing about rescue operations back in Jiegu.  Where are people turning to for help?

JAMIN:  Yes, I actually just got off the phone with a friend of mine who is still there and he reported that 90% of the buildings are completely destroyed.  So absolutely nobody is living in their home.  Everyone is living either at the grass lands or out in some of the monastery guest houses that are outside of the city.  But we drove seven hours yesterday and then another eight hours today to the provincial capital and all along the way we saw massive amounts of aid pouring down to Jiegu.  We saw numerous military vehicles, aid vehicles, medical personnel and then our friends also have said that a lot of aid has arrived via air and so the conditions tonight are much better than what they were last night.  Everyone stayed, basically out in the open last night.  But at least tonight a lot of them now have adequate clothing, tents and sleeping bags.  Not everybody, but definitely a lot more than what had them last night.

WERMAN:  I’m wondering Jamin whether you and your family had been living in Jiegu with kind of a understanding in the back of your mind that at some point there is going to be an earthquake.

JAMIN:  You know, honestly, I never had thought about it before.  I was always more worried about it in the city.  Shening had a major earthquake back in the 1920′s that kind of leveled the city and so I’ve always been in the back of my mind always thought that the provincial capital would have the earthquake.

WERMAN: American ex-patriot Jamin in Shening, China.  Thank you very much and stay safe Jamin.

JAMIN:  Oh you’re welcome.

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