updated 7:58 p.m. ET May 12, 2008

CHENGDU, China - A powerful earthquake toppled buildings, schools and a chemical plant Monday in central China, killing nearly 10,000 people and trapping untold numbers in mounds of concrete, steel and earth in the worst quake in three decades.

The 7.9-magnitude quake devastated a region of small cities and towns set amid steep hills north of Sichuan’s provincial capital of Chengdu. Striking in midafternoon, it emptied office buildings across the country in Beijing and could be felt as far away as Vietnam.

Snippets from the state-run Xinhua News Agency and photos posted on the Internet underscored the immense scale of the devastation. In the town of Juyuan, south of the epicenter, a three-story high school collapsed, burying as many as 900 students and killing at least 50, Xinhua said. Photos showed people using cranes, mechanical hoists and their hands to remove slabs of concrete and steel. As many as 2,300 people were still buried under rubble, Xinhua said.

Teenagers struggled to break free from the rubble, “while others were crying out for help,”  Xinhua said. Families waited in the rain near the wreckage as rescuers wrote the names of the dead on a blackboard, the news agency reported.

Parents of the dead students built makeshift religious altars at the site, resting the corpses on any available piece of plywood or cardboard, and burning paper money and incense in a traditional honor for their child in the afterlife, according to NPR’s Melissa Block.

In Beichuan county, northeast of the epicenter, 80 percent of the buildings fell, and 10,000 people were injured, Xinhua said. Men younger than 50 were ordered to bring tools to the area to help dig out any survivors. About 600 people died in Shifang city, which was the site of a major chemical leak. The Xinhua report did not say whether people were killed by the quake or the chemical leak.

'We're afraid'
The earthquake hit one of the last homes of the giant panda at the Wolong Nature Reserve and panda breeding center, in Wenchuan county, which remained out of contact, Xinhua said.

In Chengdu, it crashed telephone networks and hours later left parts of the city of 10 million in darkness.