| Rescue teams had already reached the remote villages in mountainous Baoxing County on foot, but landslides were blocking access to aid trucks and preventing some of the casualties from being brought out. Now state media is reporting that a path has been cleared, although, in heavy fog, and with regular aftershocks, the going is slow. Even in the more accessible areas of neighbouring Lushan county the aid effort has been hampered by congestion on the single road in, and some of those who've been made homeless are complaining that they've not yet received food or water. Although on the same fault line, this earthquake was much less powerful than the one that struck Sichuan Province in 2008, and the death toll is not expected to rise significantly. Once again though it's the poor who've borne the brunt of the disaster, with the biggest killer not the earthquake itself, but poorly constructed houses. |
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