May 21 (Bloomberg) -- China may take as many as 10 years to recover from its deadliest earthquake since 1976 as the government relocates more than 12 million people left homeless by the disaster, World Vision, a Christian aid group, said.

``We're going to see a real massive internal displacement,'' Jeffrey Wright, a spokesman for U.S.-based World Vision, said in a phone interview. ``It's going to take five to 10 years to really recover from this.'' World Vision delivers food, clothing and medical supplies to disaster zones.

The May 12 earthquake destroyed 5.4 million homes and damaged another 21.4 million, the Ministry of Civil Affairs said in Beijing. As of 6 p.m. Beijing time yesterday, 40,075 people had died and 247,645 were injured, the official Xinhua News Agency reported, citing the State Council, China's Cabinet.

Officials are rushing to house the 12.4 million people displaced by the quake in shelters to prevent the spread of disease with the onset of the rainy season in Sichuan, the worst-hit region, and surrounding provinces. The government appealed to overseas donors to make sending tents a priority.

``We are encouraging people affected to seek shelter with relatives and friends,'' Jiang Li, vice minister at the Ministry of Civil Affairs, said at a Beijing news briefing yesterday. The government is opening public venues to resettle people ``and this is where we need huge numbers of tents.''

More than 278,000 tents have been sent to the earthquake zone and the government has ordered 700,000 more, Jiang said. As many as 3 million tents are needed, as are foldable beds, crockery and gas canisters, she said.

Rains Start

Rain continued falling today and is forecast to continue till at least tomorrow, the China Meteorological Administration said in its latest English-language advisory. The rain has heightened concern about mudslides and the spread of disease.

``Mudslides are the biggest worry for now amid the torrential rain because the ground has already been destabilized,'' Jiang said.

Orphans and elderly people who lost relatives in the quake and haven't anyone to support them will get a monthly allowance of 600 yuan ($86) for the next three months, Jiang said. The Finance Ministry has allocated 2.5 billion yuan in emergency aid, she said.

The central government is shipping 384,000 tons of grain from its reserves to Sichuan province to feed survivors.

More survivors were found yesterday. Wang Youqun, a 60- year-old retiree in Pengzhou, was rescued 196 hours after the quake struck. She lived on rainwater for the past few days, according to Xinhua.

Earlier, rescuers took 30 hours to pull Ma Yuangjiang, 31, from the rubble in Wenchuan county near the epicenter, Xinhua said, almost 179 hours after the quake.

The earthquake was the most powerful to hit China, the world's most populous country with 1.3 billion people, since a magnitude-8.6 quake struck Tibet in 1950, killing 1,526 people. A 7.5-magnitude temblor in Tangshan in the northeast killed 250,000 in 1976, according to the USGS.

China's seismology department said last week's quake had a magnitude of 8.

To contact the reporters on this story: Eugene Tang in Beijing at eugenetang@bloomberg.net; Aaron Sheldrick in Tokyo at asheldrick@bloomberg.net.

Last Updated: May 20, 2008 21:53 EDT