That cracking sound you heard was my heart breaking.
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"China quake survivors seek shelter"
"by Edward Cody, Washington Post | May 16, 2008
MIANYANG, China - Thousands of stunned peasants streamed out of devastated mountain villages in search of food and shelter yesterday, transformed into homeless refugees by the violent earthquake that ravaged central China on Monday.
More than 20,000 farmers and small-town shopkeepers, along with children and elderly, filled up the Jiu Zhou Sports Stadium in Mianyang, the regional capital about 60 miles northeast of Chengdu. Officials said more were arriving by the hour as military rescue teams reopened roads and homeless families made their way out of the badly damaged Beichuan County hills just northeast of the epicenter.
Much of the initial efforts following the 7.9 magnitude quake have been to rescue those trapped in the aftermath and to deal with the dead. More than 19,500 people have been killed, and officials believe more than 26,000 people are still buried in the rubble. It is estimated that the death toll could reach 50,000. But aiding the survivors might prove an even larger task.
One arrival, a woman with hair matted by dust and dark bruises staining her cheeks, was led into the stadium by a nurse. The woman looked straight ahead but seemed to see nothing, as if she were sleepwalking. She limped on her left leg, and her pants were caked with the yellow dust of debris from a fallen building.
Nearby, families pushed on toward the main steps, carrying clothes in plastic bags and looking for a place to sit down. Their faces were also vacant, strained from lack of sleep and the shock of what they had endured over the past 72 hours.
Atop the steps, Jia Sushi, 26, sat alone, quietly weeping and looking over the teeming entranceway. She lost her husband soon after they arrived Wednesday from Beidisi Village, she said, and she had no idea where to begin looking among the thousands of people milling about before her.
The confusion in the stadium, jammed with people sitting on the ground and surrounded by tents and tarps strung from trees, suggested the formidable dimensions of the challenge facing the Chinese government even after large-scale rescue operations are abandoned in the quake zone. Not only do the homeless peasants have to be cared for in short-term refugee centers, an official said but they also will have to get long-term help in rebuilding their homes, schools, and stores if the area is ever to return to its traditional agriculture-based prosperity.
Yes, this devastating tragedy has VAST IMPLICATIONS and REPERCUSSIONS for sure!!!
Dealing with the fallout from Monday's tremor seemed likely to become a large part of the Communist Party's mission in the coming months, casting a shadow over its ambition of staging a joyful Olympic Games in Beijing in August and testing the leadership of President Hu Jintao, Premier Wen Jiabao, and the party's other key figures.
Yes, those are only games, but it saddens me that China's shining moment on the world stage has been marred.
Tibetan protests, you say? What protests?
The government estimated that about 10 million people across half a dozen provinces were directly affected by the earthquake, with Sichuan the hardest hit, according to the official New China News Agency.
Beichuan County, which has a population of more than 160,000, mostly farmers, lost 80 percent of its houses, officials told the New China News Agency. Beichuan city, its main center 30 miles northwest of here, was largely reduced to rubble, with bodies still laid out in the streets.
"The whole county has been destroyed," Gu Qinhui, a regional director of the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies, told reporters in Beijing after a visit to Beichuan."It's almost unimaginable to me, readers. Until you see some of it.
"Rescuers strain for sounds of life under rubble"
"by Jill Drew, Washington Post | May 16, 2008
BEICHUAN, China - "What floor were you on?" Five taps. "How many are you?" Eight taps. Then, tap, tap, tap, tap.
Buried underneath seven stories of rubble, 72 hours after Monday's massive earthquake, there were sounds of life. The taps came from the bottom of what had once been a school that slid down a slope and was buried under a onetime grocery store.
Dozens of soldiers arrived soon after the discovery and began planning how to dig the survivors out. To do it safely would take hours, they reasoned, and they would need heavy equipment to move the tower of concrete, bricks, and wood.
"But they will die. That's too long," said one of the soldiers.
A local man helping with the rescue volunteered to try to wriggle in underneath the rubble to see if he could pull anyone out. But as he shined a flashlight into the open crevice of twisted metal, he saw no movement.
Small tremors periodically shook the ground. This kind of rescue was too dangerous, the soldiers' commander determined, and there was little hope of getting heavy equipment anywhere near this valley of collapsed buildings.
As the soldiers planned, villagers walked through in a desperate search for their loved ones. One man walked on broken slabs of what had been an apartment building, blowing a whistle and putting his ear to the rubble for any reply. Another man called a name, over and over. After hundreds of cries, he hunched down, buried his head, and sobbed.
Another man stood clasping a plastic bag of photographs in his hands, tears in his eyes as he stood silently and gazed at the pile of bricks and wires that had been a kindergarten where his wife taught. There were no signs of life in this pile.
A soldier from an army hospital said at least 80 people had been rescued in Beichuan yesterday, 60 of them students. Five people were seen being carried away on stretchers through the ruins of the town, which used to have a population of 40,000. They walked over a dirt trail for about half a mile until they reached a road where waiting ambulances took the wounded away.
Dozens of villagers also trudged along the path, many giving up hope of finding their families.
After about two hours of discussion, soldiers got word on their radio that more children were alive in the rubble of a school farther down the valley. Since they could confirm only one person alive in this place, they left some bottles of water and six army hospital paramedics and moved out to try to rescue those at the school.
Several local men who had been watching the scene scrambled down the valley walls and began moving rocks and pieces of wood to see whether they could get a water bottle to the person trapped underneath. In all the noise, it was unclear whether there were any more taps."And China lets the help in (those with truly benign purposes):
"Foreign rescuers get the OK "
"by Henry Sanderson, Associated Press | May 16, 2008
BEIJING - After days of refusing foreign relief workers, China has accepted offers from four countries to send in rescue teams.
Hours after saying it will accept a Japanese rescue team, the Foreign Ministry said in a statement early today that specialist crews from Russia, South Korea, and Singapore would be welcome as well.
For decades, the communist government has refused outside expertise in disaster relief operations, preferring to rely on military mobilizations.
You know, like AmeriKa during Katrina!
After Monday's quake, the government initially said it welcomed foreign aid, money, and goods but not international rescue workers.
The Japanese team is made up of firefighters, police officers, technicians, and medical and other personnel.
About half of its 61 members arrived in the Sichuan provincial capital of Chengdu early today.
A 29-member Russian team, including rescue workers and medical staff, was also preparing to help search for survivors and clear rubble, the Xinhua News Agency said.
South Korea has 41 rescue workers and more than 20 medical staff on standby. The size of the contingent from Singapore was not immediately known.
China has received international aid worth more than $100 million and materials worth more than $10 million, Foreign Ministry spokesman Qin Gang said yesterday.
Still needed are tents, clothes, communication equipment, machines for disaster relief, and medicines, he said."Oh, and let's not forget Burma...
"Aid groups fear Burma's next rice harvest is jeopardized"
"by New York Times News Service | May 16, 2008
RANGOON, Burma - Normally at this time of year, Burmese farmers in the country's southern delta would be draining their rice paddies, plowing their fields with their water buffaloes, and preparing to plant new seeds for an autumn harvest.
But two weeks ago, Cyclone Nargis did away with all that. The storm's timing could not have been worse. Tens of thousands of farm families lost their draft animals, their rice stocks, and their planting seeds. Now the harvest is in doubt as well.
"I think we're going to miss it," said Hakan Tongul, deputy country director for the World Food Program in Burma. "We're going to miss the harvest. Time is short."
Tongul and other international aid experts with long experience in Burma fear the cyclone has disrupted the seasonal cycle of life in the Irrawaddy Delta, once one of the world's most fertile and important rice-growing regions.
Delta farmers lost 149,000 water buffaloes, said Brian Agland, the country director for CARE, and it will be impossible to replace them in time for the plowing season. Instead, CARE and other aid groups will likely be buying what the locals call "iron buffaloes" - small red tractors made in China that go for about $1,000 apiece.
Huge deliveries of new rice seeds are needed, too. Thailand is the likely source for new seeds, Traditionally, delta farmers have used seeds from the rice they grew the year before.
I'll bet this is going to help the GMO corporations somehow.
New livestock - pigs, ducks, chickens, and buffaloes - and seeds are among the priority items for aid groups working in rural development in the delta.
"The agricultural cycle is so critical," Agland said yesterday. "We've got to avoid a hunger gap, and we've got very little time."
Yesterday the government's count of the dead rose nearly 5,000, to more than 43,000, with 27,838 missing. The International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies has estimated the death toll at between 68,833 and 127,990, the AP said.
Yeah, the 128,000 death toll is a STUNNER!!!!
UN agencies and international relief groups held an emergency, closed meeting yesterday to plot strategies for getting the delta farmers back to their farms and back to work
"They're restricting, they're hiding, they're not allowing us to import, almost nothing," Tongul said. "I need 50,000 tons of rice to feed people for the next six months. I've got 3,000 on hand. This is what keeps me awake at night."
Many delta farm families who have lost their homes and livelihoods have sought shelter in Buddhist monasteries, old buildings, or schools.
The government has been trucking survivors to military-run refugee settlements far from their farms. The farmers, the aid agencies say, need to get back to whatever is left of their farms in order to rebuild houses, drain paddies, and get on with the plowing-and-planting schedule.
Unless they can do that work, international aid groups in Burma say, the country will need another 50,000 tons of rice six months from now, Tongul said.
The Rangoon River, which was blocked by sunken ships and storm debris, reopened yesterday, an encouraging development for relief officials. It means that larger shipments - especially of rice - can now be delivered by boat into the port at Rangoon if the government loosens its restrictions on imports.
The World Food Program got thousands of high-energy biscuits into the south, but the agency has heard that some of the biscuits have been stolen, or replaced with cheap crackers, Tongul said. He said that the United Nations has launched an investigation into the matter.
Burma's ruling junta warned in a state radio address that legal action would be taken against people who trade, hoard, or misuse international aid for cyclone survivors.
Heavy rains continued to drench Rangoon and the delta yesterday, further complicating aid deliveries as bridges and roads wash out.
Oh, God, will the suffering never end?
Trucks have so far been used to get most of the aid from the capital region to the delta, and groups like Save the Children, World Vision, and CARE have had some success in delivering food into the south.
But many townships and villages deep in the delta are still largely out of contact, and it is likely the death toll will jump once counts in those areas can be taken, regional experts say.
"We've been using small boats and motorbikes to get to places," Agland said, "and we're finding villages where 200 people used to live, and now there's five or 10."
Aaaaaahhhhhhhh!!!!
That was an EXCLAMATION of HORROR!!!!
Missing, Agland cautioned, did not necessarily mean dead.
"For example, there have been a lot of lost kids reported, but we're also finding groups of kids on their own" in rural, storm-damaged areas, he said.
WTF? Is it like a "Lord of the Flies" situation, or...?
"The death toll is quite high, and I don't know if we'll ever find out the real number. The focus now is stopping more deaths, and keeping the number from growing."
(Blog author shivers at this point)
