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A powerful earthquake struck southwestern China on Monday, topple thousands of home, factories and offices, trapping students in schools, and killing at least 10,000 populace, the country’s worst natural disaster in three decades.The quake, which was estimated preliminarily to have had a magnitude of 7.9, ravaged a mountainous region outside Chengdu, capital of Sichuan Province, just after lunchtime Monday, destroying 80 percent of structure in a number of of the towns and small cities near its epicenter, Chinese official said. Its tremors were felt as far away as Vietnam and set off another, smaller quake in the outskirts of Beijing, 900 miles away.Landslides, power failure and fallen mobile phone towers left much of the affected area cut off from the outside world and limited information about the damage. But snapshots of concentrated devastation suggested that the death toll that could rise significantly as rescue workers reached the most heavily damaged towns. State media reported at noon on Tuesday that 10,000 people remain buried in Mianzhu, one of the cities near the epicenter in Wenchuan.

At smallest amount two large schools, every with nearly 1,000 students, were reduced to piles of concrete dust and debris, setting off a frantic search for survivors that long-drawn-out through the night.Two chemical factories in Shifang were destroyed, spilling 80 tons of toxic liquid ammonia, forcing 6,000 people to evacuate their homes. The destruction of a steam turbine factory in the metropolis of Mianzhu killed at least 60 workers and left 500 others missing, official said on Tuesday.The quake was already China’s biggest natural disaster since one more earthquake leveled the city of Tangshan in eastern China in 1976, leaving 240,000 people deceased and affectation a severe challenge to the ruling Communist Party, which initially tried to cover up the disaster.

This time, officials rapidly mobilized 50,000 military to help with rescue efforts, state media said. Prime Minister Wen Jiabao flew to the scene and was shown coordinating tragedy response teams from the cabin of his jet.The prime minister later stood outside the damaged edifice of the Traditional Medicine Hospital in the city of Dujiangyan, shouting support at people trapped in its ruins.“Hang on a bit longer,” he said in televised remarks. “The troop are rescuing you. As long as there is the slightest hope, we will never relax our efforts.”The quake was the latest in a series of events that have disrupted China’s planning for the Olympic sports competition in August, including widespread unrest among the country’s ethnic Tibetan population, which lives in large numbers in the same part of Sichuan Province where the tremor struck.China’s leaders often respond assertively to natural disasters, fearing a strong popular reaction if they bungle save efforts. But a complex relief operation on the scale that may be needed in Sichuan could strain Chinese resources even as the United Nations and many charitable groups are busy providing aid to Myanmar, hit by a huge cyclone this month.

But officials had yet to describe the crash in Wenchuan itself, which has a population of 112,000 and is home to the Wolong Nature Reserve, the largest panda reserve in China. The region of Beichuan, on the way from Chengdu to Wenchuan, suffered several thousand deaths, state medium said.According to Chinese TV, 100 police officers were clambering across the region’s only road, which was blocked by massive rock slides, to open a passageway to Wenchuan, but had yet to arrive at it on Tuesday dawn.China’s massive Three Gorges Dam, a few hundred miles east of the earthquake’s epicenter, reported no instant evils.