China Quake Death Toll Nears 9,000

[Jitway]

A earthquake devastated southwestern China on Monday, killing close to 9,000 people and trapping hundreds of others under flattened schools, factories and houses.

 

The 7.8 magnitude quake, centered in Sichuan province, struck in the middle of the school day and toppled at least eight schools. Factories and at least one hospital were also razed, trapping hundreds more, state media said.

 

The death toll appeared likely to climb in China's worst earthquake for over three decades.

 

About 900 teenagers were buried in the rubble of a collapsed three-storey school building in the Sichuan city of Dujiangyan. Villagers helped dozens of students out as cranes excavated the site.

 

In Shefang city in Sichuan, 6,000 residents were evacuated after two chemical plants were leveled, trapping more than a hundred people and spilling corrosive liquids.

 

The government has rushed troops and medical teams to dig for survivors and treat the injured. State television showed Premier Wen Jiabao, who flew to Sichuan, shouting words of hope to people buried under heavy concrete ruins.

 

"Everyone hang in there. We're rescuing you," he yelled into a hole as survivors nearby wept and moaned.

 

But severed roads and rail lines have blocked rescuers' way to the epicenter in Wenchuan, a hilly county of 112,000 people about 100 km (62 miles) from the Sichuan's provincial capital Chengdu. Wen said troops would walk in if they had to.

 

More than 7,000 of the dead were in Sichuan's Beichuan Qiang Autonomous County, where 80 percent of the buildings were destroyed, Sichuan television said. Beichuan has a population of 161,000, meaning about one in 10 there were killed or injured.

 

"We are doing everything we can, but the roads are blanketed with rocks and boulders," Xinhua quoted Sichuan deputy party chief Li Chongxi as saying.

 

"Even if it means walking in, we must enter the worst-hit areas as quickly as possible," Wen said, according to Xinhua.

 

But showers forecast in Sichuan for Tuesday could make that more difficult.

 

"The road is very hard-going, I don't know when we'll get there," a paramilitary officer, Li Zaiyuan, leading 100 troops by foot some 70 kms from Wenchuan, told state television.

 

Most phone lines in Wenchuan were down and a website for the region's Aba prefecture said the quake had cut several major highways and communications were largely severed in 11 counties.

 

"The road started swaying as I was driving. Rocks fell from the mountains, with dust darkening the sky over the valley," a driver for Sichuan's seismological bureau was quoted by Xinhua as saying near the epicenter.

 

Troops have begun pouring into the region with sniffer dogs, life detection equipment, and firefighters carrying explosives to blow up rocks piled on the roads, state television said.

 

Landslides had cut off three major rail lines leading to Chengdu, stranding 31 passenger trains and 149 cargo trains, Xinhua said, but no casualties had been reported.

 

The National Tourism Administration had ordered travel agencies to halt tour groups to or through the quake area.

 

The quake's force was felt across much of China and caused buildings to sway in Beijing and Shanghai and as far away as the Thai capital Bangkok.

 

The quake was the worst to hit China since the 1976 Tangshan earthquake in northeastern China where up to 300,000 died.

 

This time the devastation was worst in hilly farming country, where winding roads can be hard travel even in normal times. The area is near the famed Wolong panda reserve.

 

The disaster has come at a bad time for China, which holds the Olympic Games in August, and has been struggling to keep a lid on unrest in ethnic Tibetan areas.

 

The U.S. Geological Survey website (http://earthquake.usgs.gov) said the main quake struck at 0628 GMT at a depth of 10 km (6 miles).

 

Thousands of people were milling about in the main square of Chengdu late on Monday, where at least 45 had died and 600 were injured, state television reported. Many residents and school students there and across the region slept outside.

 

In Beijing and Shanghai, office workers poured into the streets. In the capital, there was no visible damage and the showpiece Bird's Nest Olympic stadium was unscathed.

 

In Washington, President George W. Bush said the United States was ready to help, and Japan, France, Germany and other powers also sent messages offering condolences and help.

 

But for now China is struggling to get its own rescuers where they are most needed, and one international aid expert said the death toll was likely to rise in coming days.

 

"Our biggest concern is children who were in schools and orphanages when the earthquake hit," said Wyndham James, the China country director for the Save the Children charity.

 

"I can imagine the authorities are releasing only conservative figures that are likely to grow."

 

Some 61 people have been confirmed killed in northern Shaanxi, 48 in northwestern Gansu, 50 in Chongqing municipality, and one in Yunnan province, Xinhua said, citing the national headquarters of disaster relief.

 

 

 

My heart goes out to these people. 7000 alone in just one providence. 600 students buried alive. This was a bad one for sure.

 

Source HERE

[Lucandrake]

Guess Mother Nature is going through her period...

 

Wtf 3 different natural disaster threads?

[iq_132]

You'd think the Chinese would be use to it by now...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_natur...oll#Earthquakes

[Jitway]

Ya they get quite a few but you never get use to them. I have been through a few and every time it was scarey. Natural disasters are not fun and being through every thing mother nature could throw at me I can vouch for this. Hurricanes, Typhoons, Earthquakes, Lightning Strikes and Tornadoes. Been through them all and each time it was like is this my last day on earth so I know how this people felt and it is nothing to make lite of.

[Shibathedog]

I heard it hit 10,000

 

I've never been through a "real" earthquake, but it sounds pretty terrible.

[Mooney]

Last I heard it was over 12,000, which is also over 9000.

[L.S.D]

It's reported as 12K and climbing today.

 

Remind me of the song from Marilyn Manson.

 

"Death is just a statistic"

[Jitway]

UPDATE

 

An aftershock brought new havoc to the earthquake-stricken region of China on Friday, as it struggled to bury some of its estimated 50,000 dead, dig out more survivors and help thousands of injured and homeless.

 

President Hu Jintao flew to the battered province of Sichuan and Premier Wen Jiabao said the quake damage could exceed that of the devastating 1976 tremor in the northeastern city of Tangshan, which killed up to 300,000 people.

 

Wen called on officials to ensure social stability as frustration and exhaustion grew among survivors, many of whom have lost everything and are living in tents or in the open.

 

China put the known death toll at just over 22,000 on Friday but has said it expects it to eventually exceed 50,000. About 4.8 million people have lost their homes.

 

Thousands of men, women and children were heading on foot for Mianyang, a city near the epicenter, saying they were abandoning their ruined villages for good.

 

Anger has focused on the state of school buildings, many of which crumpled in Monday's 7.9 magnitude quake, burying thousands of children and prompting the Housing Ministry to order an investigation.

 

Hu and Wen stressed that searching for survivors remained the top priority.

 

"We cannot talk about giving up too easily," Wen said. "Life should go on. I believe people in the quake area can definitely build their hometowns even better with their own hands. That is also the biggest consolation for the dead."

 

The country is on precautionary alert against possible radiation leaks, according to a government Web site.

 

The disaster area is home to China's chief nuclear weapons research lab in Mianyang, as well as several secretive atomic sites, but no nuclear power stations.

 

Thousands of residents from Beichuan, one of the places worst hit, streamed away from the town carrying babies, bags and suitcases.

 

The town was a scene of devastation, with virtually every building either demolished or damaged beyond habitation.

 

To the south, in the village of Houzhuang, residents said they were coping on their own, aid and troops yet to reach them.

 

"We ate some corn, but now we are suffering from diarrhea after drinking water from the ditch for two days," one said.

 

BUCKLED ROADS, LANDSLIDES

 

The aftershock, measuring 5.9 on the Richter scale, hit Lixian, to the west of the epicenter in Wenchuan, cutting newly repaired roads and telecommunications.

 

"A number of vehicles were buried in landslides. The casualties were not known," Xinhua news agency said, adding four of its reporters narrowly escaped death when a house collapsed.

 

China has mobilized 130,000 troops to the disaster area, but with buckled and blocked roads, supplies and rescuers have struggled to reach the worst-hit areas.

 

Offers of help have also flooded in. The first foreign rescue teams, from Japan, Russia, Taiwan, South Korea and Singapore have arrived in Sichuan province.

 

At China's request, the World Food Program said it was sending enough ready-to-eat meals for 118,000 people.

 

UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon announced emergency funds of up to seven million dollars and said more would be available.

 

The United States said it had provided China with satellite images of earthquake-stricken areas, and would send two planeloads of relief for victims this weekend.

 

Xinhua said 33 people were dug out of the rubble in Beichuan still alive on Friday.

 

Peng Zhijun, 46, had eaten cigarettes and paper napkins and had drunk his urine to survive. A 50-year-old worker was rescued from a collapsed fertilizer plant after being trapped for 100 hours, a witness told Reuters.

 

Many survivors were on the move, desperately seeking food, shelter or medical treatment. Ning Feng told Reuters he had spent two hungry days limping out of the town of Yingxiu after deciding that waiting to be rescued could be more dangerous than risking landslides and exhaustion on the trek out.

 

"I had to do it on my own. Who was there to help me?" the 19-year-old painter of traditional Tibetan art said, as he stopped to rest on the winding mountain path.

 

ANGER OVER SCHOOL DEATHS

 

In Dujiangyan, a school collapse buried 900 students. In Wufu, nearly every building in the village withstood the quake but for a primary school, whose collapse killed about 300.

 

"Our child wasn't killed by the earthquake. She and the others were killed by a derelict building. The officials knew it was unsafe," said Bi Kaiwei, whose daughter, 13, was killed.

 

Rescuers found two girls, one in a coma and the other dead, holding hands in the ruins of their school, Xinhua said.

 

Housing Minister Jiang Weixin said the schools had not been designed to withstand such a powerful earthquake, but added that corruption may have led to substandard construction.

 

"At this stage we cannot rule out the possibility that there has been shoddy work and inferior materials," Jiang told a news conference in Beijing.

 

There were also concerns about epidemics if the dead were not soon buried or cremated.

 

"A lot of tourists have been killed. We don't know how to deal with the bodies, some of which have been highly decomposed, but their relatives will come to look for them," an army officer in the badly hit Yinmugou resort in Pengzhou told Sichuan TV.

 

"I am really worried about epidemics," he said.

 

Hundreds of damaged dams have also raised fears of collapse and flooding of areas struggling to recover from the quake.

 

 

 

 

This is just sad. So many dead and who knows really how many there are. All the lives lost is just sad.

 

Source HERE

[Tynvar]

Earthquakes are terrible. We have 1 or more per year, some small some a bit stronger. We never know when a big one will come. Last one was over 10 years ago so people are starting to worry.

[emsley]

Unlucky bastards. ;(

[ken_cinder]

I'm worried about an epidemic too, there have been so many viruses and diseases come out of asia in the last 5 years or so.

Research suggests that THE PLAGUE (Yes, I said it) is lying dormant, and things like this as well as a growing state of general unsanitary living conditions in small villages in many countries may very well awaken it.

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Third_Pandemic

 

We're about due for another, given that the first "plague" was in 1300/1400s", the second was around the 1600s and then the Third Pandemic in the mid 1800s and ending in the early 1900s. What with all these wierd "flu's" and other things like SARS that can't be explained and truly diagnosed properly, I see another plague on it's way.