YUXI, China -- Many people of this city in southwester China spent Saturday night in tents, too scared to sleep in their homes after an earthquake which killed 188 people early that morning. Countless homes were destroyed and lots of people became homeless after the earthquake which is believed to have a magnitude of 7. The quake was not as serious as the 7.9-magnitude earthquake in 2008 that left more than 70,000 people dead in the Wenchuan area. But villagers who work in Chengdu, about 100 miles away, hurried back home Sunday morning, many on foot, the lucky ones on motorbikes, to check on their homes. Song Yuanqing, 43, a worker, arrived back after a 22-hour trip and found his house was still there but had already been very unstable . "We would like to do something, but we can't do anything," Mr. Song said as he sat with neighbors around an outdoor fire built by the village leader in his backyard. In all, the government sent about 7,000 soldiers and People's Armed Police officers to the earthquake-hit area. By Saturday evening, there were so many rescue workers in the area that the government asked volunteers to stop coming. Li Keqiang, China's prime minister, flew to the area and slept in a tent on Saturday evening in Lushan County. The earthquake shook Sichuan Province at 8 a.m., when people were getting up a little later than usual because schools and universities were closed. "We were just getting up and getting dressed in our dormitory when the building shook, and I looked outside from our window and saw a row of houses had collapsed," Xu Yan, 22, a student at the Agricultural University in Ya'an, said in a telephone interview. " _ ." The Chinese government said early Sunday that the death toll was 174, and about 5,700 people had been injured. The earthquake was also felt in Chengdu, one of China's biggest cities and the capital of Sichuan Province. People described water getting out of home aquariums and things like balls falling to the floor. In the town of Longmen, another hard-hit area near Ya'an, a local man, Zhang Yan, said 90 percent of the buildings had collapsed. "About 100 people died around here," Ms. Zhang said in a telephone interview. "Rescue teams have not yet arrived. There is no water or electricity." In the 2008 quake, many schools of poor quality collapsed and killed thousands of students. This time, many people also expressed their worries about students on their micro-blogs. Sichuan Province is also one of China's best-known hometowns for pandas, and at the Bifengxia reserve, about six miles north of Ya'an, workers said that 20 pandas in the park were safe. "We examined the panda area after the quake, and they were not affected," said Chen Yong, an officer of the reserve. Why did many people hurriy home after the earthquake.
They wanted to provide rescue to the hit area and give other people a helping hand as volunteers. They wanted to find out the situation of their home. They felt it too dangerous to stay where they had been. There weren't enough soldiers in the hit-area.