Students from the University College of the Fraser Valley are shown arriving at a Sichuan university Friday. (Submitted by Greg Anderson)

B.C. university students on a study tour in southwestern China were unharmed during a devastating earthquake that killed and injured thousands of people on Monday, CBC News has learned.

The 10 students and a teacher from the University College of the Fraser Valley went to Chengdu last Friday to attend a summer program at Sichuan Normal University, said Greg Anderson, an instructor with the kinesiology department at the college.

The students, between the ages of 20 and 28, had just sat down in their first class when the 7.9-magnitude quake hit an area about 100 kilometres northwest of the Sichuan provincial capital of Chengdu.

"It started to shake. The floor was rolling so they all tried to run out of the building. It was actually quite tough to stay balanced because the floor was rolling that much," Anderson told CBC News Monday.

Rescuers search for victims in the debris of a hospital after the earthquake in Dujiangyan, in southwest China's Sichuan province. (Associated Press/Color China Photo)

Anderson said he received a phone call at 3 a.m. from a colleague who is accompanying the students to let him know that nobody was injured.

Anderson was able to inform the students' parents before they found out about the quake on the news.

The study program, which is about traditional forms of Chinese medicine, was scheduled to run for nine weeks but whether it will continue is uncertain, Anderson said.

Meanwhile, many Chinese immigrants in Vancouver spent Monday glued to cellphones and computers, trying to contact family members and relatives.

Weining Xu, who has been living in Vancouver for two years while studying English, said she is worried about relatives in the Sichuan province. (CBC)

Zaixin Ma, whose family lives in Chengdu, said he watched in horror as images of collapsed buildings in his home city flashed across his TV screen.

For hours, Ma said he didn't know if his 90-year-old mother and six brothers and sisters were hurt or not.

"I tried again and again my younger sister's [cellphone]," Ma said. "I [finally] got it and she [told] me it's OK. Our family is OK."

Weining Xu, who has been living in Vancouver for two years while studying English, said she has relatives in the Sichuan province.

"I'm a little bit nervous to make a phone call. I don't know if someone cannot answer me [because they are injured]…. What can I do here?"

Various Chinese community groups in Vancouver are pulling resources together to co-ordinate a quick response to the earthquake in China.