Altitude sickness

Since Wednesday, thousands of professional rescuers, soldiers, police, fire-fighters and medical workers have been mobilized nationwide for the rescue operation.

Premier Wen Jiabao arrived at Yushu late Thursday to oversee work and urged all-out efforts to save lives.

But rescuers and sniffer dogs particularly had to fight altitude sickness and rough weather in this mountainous Tibetan region.

More than two dozen fire-fighters from the country's southern coast had to back out of the operation after suffering altitude sickness, sources with the rescue headquarters said.

A Xinhua reporter saw a couple of soldiers looking sick and vomiting as they dug through the rubble. Some were getting drip treatment at the rescue site.

"(Altitude sickness) is not an issue. The focus is to find survivors and we will never give up," Fu said.

Even Tibetan monks who came to join the rescue operations from nearby towns felt sick. "We sleep on the ground covered with only clothes. It's cold. And some developed symptoms of altitude sickness," a monk told Xinhua.

He said he and more than 700 monks came to Gyegu to join the rescue operations. They dug through rubble with bare hands and were able to find five survivors.

"We also pray for the dead. It's our responsibility," he said.

An altitude sickness medical treatment team departed by car from Xining, capital of the province, to the quake-hit area Friday afternoon, said the team leader Geruli, vice president of Qinghai University and executive director of the International Society for Mountain Medicine.

The team consists of six experts of the Key Laboratory of Mountain Medicine of Qinghai university.

Geruli said the team was expected to arrive Saturday morning as the way from Xining to Yushu was much more crowded than expected.

Volunteer registration desk

As of Friday afternoon there were more than 400 volunteers registered at the "registration office" which has only two wooden desks and several chairs on the field of Yushu Stadium.

"I have time, so I came," said a volunteer organizer named Lai Jintu, who gave up his ceramics business in east China's Fujian Province and hurried to Yushu by plane early Wednesday.

"When I arrived, the volunteers had not been organized," said Jin who had participated in the rescuing work after Sichuan earthquake on May 12 2008.

Lai tore a red flag and made red belts for volunteers, which identified them as such.

"The volunteers are from Jilin, Shaanxi, Sichuan, Guangdong, Hongkong and Macao. They are middle school students, white-colors, retired teachers..." Lai said.

Lai had divided the 400 volunteers into groups performing different tasks.

"We do whatever we can," he said.

One of the volunteers named Xin Tuji, 48 years old, came here by train with his son from Xi'an ,capital of neighboring Shaanxi Province after telling his wife a white lie to get away.

"I told her that I came to Weinan (a city northeast to Xi'an) to teach my son how to drive. I was afraid she would worry if she knew I was here," Xin said.

It was a repeat of what Xin did to get to Sichuan right after the fatal quake in 2008, he did not want his wife to worry then as well.

"The town lacked water, so I brought water from Xi'an and gave it to the rescuers," he said.

"The place needs more disease prevention work and no food distribution center had been set up yet. I would like to help with these things in the next few days," he said.

More volunteers are on their way as 1,200 people from all over the country had applied to be volunteers to Qinghai provincial committee of the Communist Youth League of China as of Friday noon.