Deploying heavy rescue equipment onto a collapsed building roof, Chinese rescuers on Thursday began to scour the rubbles of the crumbled buildings in Haiti for survivors and victims.

 

Amid stench of the dead, the search-and-rescue work has been carried out hectically at the ruins of the headquarters of the U.N. Stabilization Mission in Port-au-Prince, Haiti's capital.

 

"The rescue work started at 9 a.m. local time (1400 GMT), but it has run into many bottlenecks," said Hung Jianfa, leader of the Chinese emergency rescue team.

 

According to Huang, the quake has caused severe property damages and casualties. "Buildings on the street were badly damaged, and many hillside buildings entirely crumbled."

 

The impoverished Caribbean country was struck by a catastrophic quake measuring 7.3 on the Richter scale on Tuesday. Eight Chinese police officers are missing after the quake, according to China's Ministry of Public Security.

 

The 18 people working for Chinese companies and enterprises in Haiti are all safe and sound, according to Chinese business representative in Haiti Wang Shuping.

 

"We can hardly manage to deploy the heavy rescue equipment to the rescue scene as a great number of homeless people are stranded on streets," Huang said.

 

The Haitian government's disaster relief system was paralyzed as the quake wreaked havoc on traffic and disabled communication networks, Huang said.

 

"There are no loading or unloading machines at the Port-au-Prince airport, so we have to unload all the rescue equipment and first aid products manually."

 

As a result, the rescue work has seriously slowed down, Huang said, adding that despite all the difficulties, his team will make all-out efforts in their rescue work in coordination with rescuers from other countries.

 

"We've conducted cooperation with the U.S. rescue team, and we also share quake-relief information with the Russian team," he said.

 

Huang added they would also carry out cooperation with other rescue teams on information sharing, medical rescue and on-site coordination.

 

Over the past years, the Chinese rescue team had carried out successful cooperation with international rescue teams from various countries including Mexico, Singapore and Switzerland.

 

Some members of the Chinese rescue team had taken part in rescue mission after the tsunami in 2004.

 

The team arrived in Port-au-Prince on early Thursday morning, with 50 members of the International Rescue Team of China, three sniffer dogs and more than 20 tons of equipment and humanitarian aid.