China Quake Death Toll Nears 9,000

[Jitway]

UPDATE

 

China declares 3 days' mourning for quake victims.

 

China declared three days of national mourning for earthquake victims and ordered a suspension of the Olympic torch relay, as the search for survivors of the disaster grew bleak Sunday.

 

The State Council said the mourning period would start Monday and include three minutes of silence observed nationwide at 2:28 p.m., the time the quake struck.

 

Beijing Olympic organizers said in a statement that the torch relay would be suspended "to express our deep mourning to the victims of the earthquake."

 

The relay already had resumed last week after the quake on a more somber note, with runners starting with a minute of silence and asking for donations along the route. Organizers have said the relay would go on as planned in quake-hit Sichuan province next month.

 

In the disaster zone, efforts appeared to shift Sunday from searching for buried survivors to clearing corpses from shattered buildings as the government said the confirmed death toll rose to 32,476.

 

Another 220,109 people suffered injuries, according to a statement from the State Council, China's Cabinet. The government has said it expects the final death toll will surpass 50,000.

 

Near the quake's epicenter, few hopeful relatives were seen in Beichuan, where several dozen corpses in blue body bags lay in a street. Soldiers regularly pulled more dead from the wreckage.

 

"It will soon be too late" to find trapped survivors, said Koji Fujiya, deputy leader of a Japanese rescue team that pulled 10 bodies from a flattened school Sunday. "We hope with our hard work we will find more people alive."

 

A "slightly bruised" man was pulled out alive from a collapsed hospital Sunday after being trapped for 139 hours, the official Xinhua News Agency reported. Experts say buried earthquake survivors can live a week or more, depending on factors including the temperature and whether they have water to drink.

 

A Malaysian rescue team in the town of Muyu, further north, sifted slowly and methodically through the wreckage. However, they were not tapping on the debris in hopes that survivors would hear and respond as other crews had done earlier — instead using giant cutters to split steel girders.

 

Dozens of students were buried in new graves dotting a green hillside overlooking the rubble, the small mounds of dirt failing to block the pungent smell of decay wafting from the ground. Most graves were unmarked, though several had wooden markers with names scribbled on them.

 

Zhou Bencen, 36, said he raced to the town's middle school after the earthquake, where relatives who arrived earlier had dug out the body of his 13-year-old daughter, Zhou Xiao, crushed on the first floor.

 

Zhou cradled his wife in his arms, holding her hand and stroking her back while she sobbed hysterically. "Oh God, oh God, why is life so bitter?" Liao Jinju wailed, over and over. The couple's 9-year-old son survived.

 

Chinese President Hu Jintao has urged rescue teams to reach remote villages battered by the earthquake where the level of damage remained unknown, according to Xinhua.

 

That was reinforced by a group of about 15 people who surrounded an Associated Press reporter at a gasoline station in Mianyang city Sunday, appealing for help for their village, Xiushui.

 

"The government is doing nothing to help us," said one man, who identified himself only by his surname, Chen. "If I gave you my complete name the government would track me down."

 

Chen did not say how many people lived there. He handed over a note signed "by the people of Xiushui," reading: "Please go to our village of Xiushui to cover the situation. The government is doing nothing to help us get water or housing."

 

More international aid was arriving, with two U.S. Air Force cargo planes loaded with tents, lanterns and 15,000 meals landing Sunday in the Sichuan provincial capital of Chengdu.

 

The World Health Organization said conditions for homeless survivors were ripe for outbreaks of disease and called for quick action to supply clean water and proper hygiene facilities. Chinese health officials have not reported any disaster-related outbreaks so far.

 

Also in the quake area, three giant pandas were missing from the world's most famous reserve for the endangered animals.

 

All the pandas at the Wolong Nature Reserve were first reported safe Tuesday, but an official with the State Forestry Administration now says three are missing, the state-run Xinhua News Agency reported Sunday.

 

Panda houses at the reserve were severely damaged and five staff members there were killed, forestry spokesman Cao Qingyao told Xinhua.

 

The 60 other giant pandas at the Wolong Nature Reserve were safe, according to the agency. The reserve is 18 miles from the epicenter of the earthquake.

 

Phone calls to the state forestry administration and to the forestry bureau in Sichuan province rang unanswered Sunday night. Fixed phone lines to the reserve remained down. Officials have been able to call the reserve only by satellite phone.

 

Meanwhile, flood threats from rivers blocked by landslides from the quake appeared to have eased after three waterways near the epicenter overflowed with no problems, Xinhua said. County officials diverted released water as a precaution.

 

The quake damaged some water projects, such as reservoirs and hydroelectric stations, but no reservoirs had burst, Liu Ning, engineer in chief with the Ministry of Water Resources, told Xinhua.

 

Nuclear facilities jolted by the quake were confirmed safe and troops were sent to reinforce security there, air force Maj. Gen. Ma Jian, deputy chief of operations for the military's General Staff Headquarters, told reporters in Beijing.

 

China has a research reactor, two nuclear fuel production sites and two atomic weapons sites in Sichuan province, the French nuclear watchdog has said, all located 40 to 90 miles from the epicenter.

 

 

 

 

This will take years to rebuild and to get back to some sense of a normal life. My heart goes out to all these people.

 

Source HERE

[Sybarite Paladin AxL]

Mother Nature is angry at China because of their policy towards Tibet I suppose. I feel sad for all the people that have lost their lives though...

[Jitway]

UPDATE

 

China's post-quake challenge: 5 million homeless

China is grappling with the next massive task in the aftermath of its earthquake — how to shelter the 5 million people left homeless.

 

Many were living Tuesday in tent cities like one at the base of Qianfo mountain in the disaster zone, offering some stability — along with food and medical care — to those whose lives were upended.

 

"After the quake, we couldn't sleep for five days. We were really, really afraid," said Chen Shigui, a weathered 55-year-old farmer who climbed for two days with his wife and injured father to reach the camp from their mountain village. "I felt relieved when we got here. It's much safer compared to my home."

 

But there's not enough room to go around.

 

The government issued an urgent appeal Tuesday for tents and brought in the first foreign teams of doctors and field hospitals, some of whom were swapping out with overseas search and rescue specialists.

 

The switch underscored a shift in the response to China's worst disaster in three decades from an emergency stage to one of recovery — and for many, enduring hardship.

 

On the second of a three-day national mourning period, the authoritarian government appeared to be moving to rein in the unusually free reporting it allowed in the disaster's first week. Most major newspapers carried near-identical photographs on their front pages of President Hu Jintao and other senior leaders with their heads bowed — a uniformity that is typical when state media censors direct coverage.

 

The May 12 earthquake's confirmed death toll rose to more than 40,000, with at least 10,000 more deaths expected, and officials said more than 32,000 people were missing. The State Council, China's Cabinet, said 80 percent of the bodies found in Sichuan province had been either cremated or buried.

 

Authorities rushed to dispose of corpses, burning them or laying them side by side in pits. Vice Minister for Civil Affairs Jiang Li said officials had begun collecting DNA samples from bodies so their identities could be confirmed later.

 

Rescues — becoming more remarkable by the hour — continued on the eighth day since the quake, but the trickle of earlier days had slowed to a drip.

 

A 60-year-old woman was pulled from the rubble of a collapsed temple in the city of Pengzhou 195 hours after the quake, the state-run Xinhua news agency reported. Wang Youqun suffered only a hip fracture and bruises on her face during her eight days in the rubble, Hong Kong-based Phoenix Satellite Television reported, citing air force officer Xie Linglong.

 

Jiang said 5 million people were homeless and that the government was setting up temporary housing for victims unable to find shelter with relatives. He said nearly 280,000 tents had been shipped to the area and 700,000 more ordered and that factories were ramping up to meet demand. Sichuan's governor said 3 million tents were needed.

 

In this encampment in An Xian, hundreds of large blue tents dot the flat farmland where rice and barley are being grown. The dried furrows provide orderly markers, lining up the temporary shelters with military precision in the fairly tidy area the size of a football field.

 

Some 4,600 people are being housed here, 90 percent of them from the mountains around Chaping village, about 20 miles away, which remains cut off by road, said camp director Yang Jianxin.

 

"All these refugees have lost their homes — their clothes and possessions are buried," he said. "We are doing what we can to help them."

 

As he spoke, the ground rumbled with the latest of what he said were hundreds of aftershocks felt in the past week. Refugees nearby gasped, and some ran from their tents in confusion, before calm settled after the 10-second tremor.

 

The entire quake zone is jittery. The Sichuan Seismological Bureau, one day after triggering a panic in the provincial capital of Chengdu by issuing a public warning of major aftershocks, said in a statement Tuesday the city was not a high risk area and was strong enough to withstand big tremors.

 

In the An Xian camp, more people are expected to show up in the next few days as more survivors make their way down from the mountains, Yang said. Some 500 people are either dead or missing from the Chaping area's main town, which still has about 1,800 survivors living in the mountains, he said.

 

Many of them, like Chen, made the 10-hour-plus hike down from the mountains with only the clothes they were wearing.

 

"We didn't sleep until we got here," Chen said. "I carried my father on my back part of the way, and then others helped me carry him down."

 

The camp has a clinic, food distribution points, toilets, a trash dump, and even plans for a temporary school. A red banner reads "Love is all around. We never feel lonely."

 

A giant, colorful pile of donated clothing lies in one corner, and dozens of women looking through it. Men in red vests regularly sweep and clean the area. Another area is a donation drop-off for a stream of well-wishers.

 

Among them was Tan Xuqiong, a 36-year-old teacher with a shiny black Prada bag slung over her shoulder, who came with her 18-year-old son to drop off boxes of water, food, and medicine.

 

"My hometown was only slightly affected. When I see these people living like this, I think it's so miserable. The contrast is shocking," said Tan, who is from Deyang city.

 

Each person in the camp receives regular daily rations: three bottles of water, a package of instant noodles, bread, and some crackers. Families also received small radios and copies of the local Mianyang Daily newspaper.

 

Loudspeakers regularly blare announcements about hygiene and reminders to get daily health checks — a precaution against possible disease outbreaks.

 

The clinic is staffed by eight physicians and six nurses — all volunteers with China's Red Cross. Running from 6 a.m. to 11 p.m., the medical staff sees about 1,000 patients a day, said Dr. Ye Mao, a 51-year-old orthopedic surgeon from Guangdong province.

 

"The biggest problem is the density of the camps. If an infection breaks out, it can spread very quickly," he said. No outbreaks have been reported.

 

After initially refusing foreign help, China is now allowing in medical and rescue teams. A Russian mobile hospital arrived Tuesday in the provincial capital of Chengdu, Foreign Ministry spokesman Qin Gang said, and other medical teams were headed in from Taiwan, Germany, Italy and Japan.

 

The disaster has raised some sensitive issues for the government about building standards, especially for schools, and about whether authorities did enough to reach survivors quickly.

 

Xinhua reported Tuesday that 129 students and 10 teachers who were trapped in the village of Xu Yong were flown out two days after local officials said all outlying villages had been reached.

 

Chen, the farmer, said refugees in his camp are getting what they need to survive, and they are grateful for the help despite the crowded conditions. His family shares a tent with 10 other people.

 

His 46-year-old wife Liu Yingchun was wistful: "I still feel bad because I can't forget all the things we lost. I used half my life to get all this and then suddenly I've lost everything. I don't know if I can ever get back what I had."

 

 

 

It just gets worse and worse. I had no idea that this many are homeless. This country has a task on their hands. Would not want to be a leader there.

 

Source HERE

[Jitway]

UPDATE

 

More than 80,000 dead or missing in China quake

 

More than 80,000 people are dead or missing from China's worst earthquake in decades, the government said on Thursday, as concerns rose that disease, the rainy season and aftershocks could bring yet more pain.

 

Previously, authorities had said they expected the final death toll to exceed 50,000.

 

Ten days after the magnitude 7.9 quake rocked the mountainous southwest of the country, relief efforts focused on the 5 million homeless and the millions of others facing disease and possible "secondary disasters."

 

The government implored the international community to provide more relief aid, saying they needed more than 3 million tents and that just 400,000 had so far reached the disaster zone.

 

As a measure of the urgency, Chinese President Hu Jintao made a personal visit to tent producers in the wealthy eastern province of Zhejiang to chivvy them on.

 

"To have enough tents is an urgent task for us," Hu said.

 

Hospitals in Sichuan province were overwhelmed by the nearly 300,000 hurt, prompting the government to send extra trains to ferry the injured to other parts of the country, state media said. Convoys of ambulances also carried the injured out.

 

Rain and aftershocks have exacerbated the dangers faced by more than 100,000 troops assisting in the relief effort.

 

"There have been constant aftershocks and the rainy season starts in June ... the earthquake has loosened the mountains," said Yun Xiaosu, Vice Minister of Land and Resources.

 

"It is very likely to cause frequent geological disasters and to once again bring major losses to the quake area."

 

Engineers are also monitoring more than 30 new lakes formed by landslides into river valleys, worried they could burst causing flashfloods into towns and tent cities.

 

PLAGUE, MENINGITIS

 

More than 5,000 health workers have fanned out to disinfect the hundreds of wrecked villages, and doctors and nurses are stationed round the clock in refugee camps.

 

"We are most worried about plague, so environmental hygiene is of top importance. Such a huge movement of people inevitably means that all sorts of viruses and bacteria move with them. We are also afraid of meningitis," a health official in Mianyang told Reuters on condition of anonymity.

 

Plague is carried by rodents and spread to humans via fleas. Meningitis, an inflammation of membranes covering the brain and spinal cord, is caused by bacteria and viruses. It can be fatal without prompt treatment.

 

More than 20,000 survivors are packed into the Jiujiang Sports Stadium in Mianyang city, about a two-hour drive from Sichuan provincial capital Chengdu.

 

The government ordered the urgent shipment of millions of doses of hepatitis, encephalitis, hemorrhagic fever and cholera vaccines to the area, state media reported.

 

"LONG AND ARDUOUS TASK"

 

Government figures showed the number of dead on Thursday exceeded 51,000, an increase of 10,000 on the previous day's toll. It said more than 29,000 were still missing.

 

The possibility was raised that U.N. chief Ban Ki-moon might visit Sichuan after his trip to cyclone-struck Myanmar.

 

Meanwhile, Premier Wen Jiabao returned to the wrecked county of Beichuan, where two-thirds of the population were killed.

 

"It will be a long and arduous task for us to relocate the people and reconstruct the region," Wen said, according to state television.

 

Local authorities plan to rebuild the Beichuan county seat at a new site in Anxian county, according to a preliminary plan yet to be approved by government.

 

"Safety is the top priority in selecting a new location and reconstruction," Xinhua news agency quoted Beichuan's Communist Party chief, Song Ming, as saying.

 

"We plan to build a monument and a memorial to commemorate the quake victims on the previous location."

 

Even as rescuers pulled more bodies from the rubble of what was a primary school in Yingxiu, workers set off explosives in other parts of the town to clear the debris and engineers and soldiers worked on building a temporary bridge.

 

Residents picked through the rubble of their homes.

 

Liu Suqing, 33, said she would not leave the town until her 8-year-old son had been found. "We're still waiting for them to pull out his body. There are many still buried under the rubble."

 

 

 

The woes just continue. But my god 80,000 that is just sad.

 

Source HERE

[Jitway]

UPDATE

 

Strong aftershock causes more misery in China

 

A strong aftershock jolted southwest China on Sunday killing at least one person and injuring 400 others, state media said, nearly a fortnight after a big earthquake killed tens of thousands in the same area.

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More than 70,000 houses were toppled during Sunday's tremor in Qingchuan, Sichuan province, state television reported. The 5.8 magnitude aftershock was epicentered 40 km (25 miles) west-northwest of Guangyuan, the U.S. Geological Survey said.

 

A local official in Guangyuan county said one person was killed and 24 hurt in collapsed houses or landslides, Xinhua state news agency reported.

 

 

 

Man like they needed this.

 

Read full story HERE