A daring rescue at sichuan's panda sanctuary

The birds all of a sudden disappeared from the sky. Something also was wrong with the pandas. They were strangely skittish. And then, inside minutes, the isolated, verdant mount above China's most famous panda modesty exploded as if hit by a megaton bomb.

"The pandas were agitated and tempo," recalled Pamela Capito, 60, a member of a 12-person American tour group visiting the modesty. "When the quake hit, we realized they had sensed it approach."

If the pandas did sense approach calamity, one ground is that the Wolong Nature modesty sprawls over 772 square miles of rugged terrain straight beside the epicentre of mon's quake.

Foreign tourists evacuated to Chengdu by armed forces helicopters described a horrifying disaster followed by a dangerous escape made possible by the kindness, and gallantry, of panda keepers and other workers who helped save them, as well as 13 panda cubs.

"These keepers were risking their lives," said Bruno Walter Weber, one of three American tourists interviewed Friday morn before they flew to Shanghai. "There was nil safe about any of it."

The fate of China's pandas drew international concern from the minute Monday's quake devastated the mount of szechwan Province. There are approximately 1,600 pandas life in the wild in China, most spreading across 44 nature reserves in szechwan. Long earlier the quake, researchers at Wolong had been placing hidden photographic camera throughout the modesty to monitoring device pandas in the wild. Now those scenes will be used to help assess the impact of the catastrophe. As yet, not a single panda is known to have died, a direct contrast to the human horror unfolding elsewhere in the mount.

Lu Zhi, one of China's lead panda experts, said researchers at the szechwan reserves were comb the mount in hunt of pandas while also trying to alleviate the greater human tragedy by delivering supplies to the remotest villages. At Wolong, she said, a senior security administrator died while taking part in rescue efforts.

Pandas are a major reason that Chengdu has become a tourist attraction and a departure point for excursions into the surrounding mountains. Taxis in the city are even affixed with panda decals. The group of 12 American tourists, traveling on a tour arranged by the World Wide Fund for Nature, had left Chengdu on the morning of the earthquake and driven to Wolong to spend the day.

"We were all really looking forward to it," said Capito, who lives in Lakeport, California

The same morning, a British group of 19 tourists also was visiting the reserve, as well as a French couple traveling with the husband's 78-year-old mother. Capito and some of the other Americans had paid extra to play with the baby pandas that morning, but administrators asked if they would mind delaying their turn. A Chinese corporate group, a benefactor of the reserve, had arrived early and hoped to use the morning time slot.

The Chinese group took the earlier session and then left by bus around 2 p.m. Along the long, winding road back to Chengdu. "That's what is upsetting," said Teri Kopp of Seattle, who sobbed quietly as she recounted that morning. "We don't know what happened to that busload of people."

The Americans were gathering for a lecture at the reserve's panda breeding center when they noticed strange behavior by the animals. The birds that had been chirping in the bushes, or twirling in the skies overhead, were gone. There was almost no sound. The pandas seemed nervous. Then at 2:28, the earthquake hit.

"For me, what was terrifying was when the top of the cliffs started exploding," Kopp said. "All the boulders started coming down. The staff at the reserve was wonderful. They were yelling at us to get under some structure."

The steep mountains looming over the breeding center were collapsing in landslides as strong aftershocks rippled through the valley. "These rocks were just flying in the air," Weber said. "A few of the rocks were the size of Volkswagens."

The aftershocks finally halted, and the people at the reserve soon realized they were trapped. Boulders blocked the path leading to a bridge that linked the breeding center to the road to Wolong village. A new path was needed: The Frenchman, three Americans, a tour guide and the panda keepers created a route by climbing over cages, stepping carefully along the top of a wall high above a river and rigging a ladder up to the bridge. It was a precarious, rain-slicked solution.

One by one, everyone carefully moved forward. One of the Americans was a 79-year-old Californian traveling with a friend. "It was very scary," Capito said. When the last person had made it to the bridge and out to the road, the staff raced back for the baby pandas. They carried the cubs tucked under their arms as they slowly edged forward above the river and then up the ladder.