At least 14,500 survivors from areas including Wenchuan County, the epicenter of Monday's devastating earthquake in southwest China's Sichuan Province, have been evacuated or provided with temporary shelter, officials said.

More than 500 residents of Yingxiu, a township in Wenchuan, have been organized to leave for Dujiangyan City to seek further medical treatment or housing. They will travel via a temporary ferry service on the Zipingpu Reservoir.

Among them are 200 students and teachers from Xuankou Middle School in the town seat of Yingxiu, which had virtually no access after quake-triggered landslides blocked the paved road in the mountains.

Several buildings at the Xuankou school, with more than 1,000 students and faculty members, were razed to the ground in the quake.

With help of rescuers from the Sichuan Provincial Mountaineers Association, the students and teachers, as well as the teachers' families, were escorted to the ferry service at 8 a.m. on Friday. They had to travel on foot for more than 90 minutes.

Hao Shichang, director of the education department of the Tibetan-Qiang Autonomous Prefectural Government of Aba, who was at the pier to oversee the evacuation, decided to lead able-bodied students and teachers to trek 30 kilometers through the mountainous paths to Dujiangyan.

"We are running short of food, water and medicine, so we should let those who are ill or injured travel by boat," said Hao. He said that the ferries' capacity was very limited, mostly to a dozen people per trip.

To the east, Pengzhou, a county-level city that falls under the jurisdiction of Chengdu, the provincial capital, is one of the worst-hit areas. Most of townships in Pengzhou lie deep among tall mountains.

More than half of Pengzhou's 800,000 residents were affected by the quake, which left 600 people dead and 3,000 others missing.

Many parts of the city were cut off by landslides triggered by the powerful quake and its aftershocks.

Zhang Yingming, vice mayor of Pengzhou, said the city had been helping 100,000 residents who had been trapped in mountains to evacuate and move to temporary housing at six major shelters. So far, 14,000 residents have been evacuated.

Zhang added they would need 1,200 extra tents and plenty of food, potable water and disinfectants as more quake victims moved into the temporary shelters.

The 7.8-magnitude earthquake that struck Wenchuan County, about 159 km northwest of the provincial capital of Chengdu, has affected an area of more than 100,000 square km.

More than 50,000 people are feared dead in Sichuan Province alone, the rescue headquarters of the State Council (cabinet) said on Thursday. The confirmed death toll in Sichuan was 19,509 as of 4:00 PM Thursday, up by 5,046 from Wednesday, according to Li Chengyun, the vice provincial governor of Sichuan.

(Xinhua News Agency May 16, 2008)