Standing in the middle of a yard bustling with soldiers, Luo Ming, a haggard 31-year-old team leader with the Sichuan Emergency Response Volunteer Group, sees a threat nearly as grave as the magnitude 7 earthquake that struck Western China’s mountainous area on Saturday: too many volunteers.

“The volunteers have created a certain kind of disaster themselves,” he says, speaking with the rapid speech of someone who has not slept in 48 hours. “There are more volunteers than there are earthquake victims. They have no place to sleep, and nothing to eat, and most of them have no experience or training.”

Mr Luo is manning the volunteer registration tent at the centre of Longmen township, where the earthquake has left thousands of people without shelter, food and water for three days. He has registered more than 500 volunteers, but he has turned even more than that away. “For some people, the biggest help that they can do for disaster areas is go back where they came from safely,” he says.