THE DEATH toll from China's worst earthquake in 30 years has risen to almost 15,000 and many of the dead are buried beneath what remains of Hanwang town in Sichuan.
There are bodies wherever you turn, some wrapped in blue plastic, some carried on the back of flatbed tricycles, some simply lying unclaimed until there is time to deal with them.
A man on a motorbike shakes his head and speaks words of solace into his mobile phone to a distraught family member. The body of his wife is tied with rope to his back, her head wrapped in a headscarf.
The weather is bright and sunny, making the rescue effort easier. Coaches, ambulances and army lorries ferry thousands of rescuers, including volunteers from the provincial capital Chengdu, into town.
They are working flat out to find survivors, but there are ever fewer emerging from the twisted metal and concrete debris of Hanwang.
"I can hear him crying in there. You have to help," says a woman, looking tiny as she kneels in front of a yellow crane, telling the driver not to pass until he has cleared the heaviest debris of her home where her husband is buried.
The crane removes some large slabs, but then drives on to help rescuers digging for the living among the 19,000 feared buried beneath this town just 50km from the quake epicentre. The woman later pulls her husband's body from the debris.
In every town, temporary shelters have been set up, using red, white and blue tarpaulin, or in some cases, political banners cut down from the roadside. Thousands of soldiers have been rushed to repair "extremely dangerous" cracks in the Zipingpu Dam upriver from Dujiangyan. Almost 400 dams have been damaged by the quake.
The mountains separate Hanwang from Wenchuan county, the epicentre of the quake, which is still cut off and where many thousands are feared dead. Soldiers who parachuted into the county say four villages have been swallowed up.
Premier Wen Jiabao, who has travelled to many of the worst-affected areas, flew into Wenchuan by helicopter to offer his support.
There are miracles. A 34-year-old woman who was eight months pregnant was rescued after spending 50 hours under debris in Dujiangyan, the centre of relief operations where hundreds of schoolchildren died when the Ju Yuan Middle School collapsed. A three-year-old girl trapped for more than 40 hours under the bodies of her parents was pulled to safety in Beichuan region.
The grounds around the 2nd People's Hospital of Deyang City have been transformed into a huge outdoor hospital, with thousands of injured lying on makeshift beds in blue tents.
"So far we have enough material, but thousands of people are coming through," said Chengdu surgeon Li Jiangang, who has been stitching up the wounded as they arrive.
"Our top task now is to save lives, as many as possible," said Wang Zhenyao, director of the disaster relief department of the ministry of civil affairs. "It is not the time to talk about giving up."