Earthquake!

Well there is a lot to tell and I'm not sure where to start.

First that is me....was thinking someone would wind up finding it. I was also with Wen Jia Bao, shook his hand, and exchanged pleasantries. If you see the footage I am standing in the background translating the conversation.

There is nothing anyone can do anymore in terms of volunteering out in the disaster areas and I mean none what so ever. They are completely over packed and have no use for more people. The army has it under control despite the fact that the medical care given to the victims on site could be better.

The situation is not good at all. I was able to go down into Beichuan today (the pictures from yesterday were from 任家坪 about 1km outside of Beichuan where a middle school had collapsed) and as we are coming up on the 4th day, there is not much hope left. First with ren jia, yesterday they were able to pull quite a few survivors out, most of which were severely wounded (internal bleeding, crushed limbs, punctured lungs, etc) but they did have a chance of survival. The problem was was that so many people were TRYING to help that they couldn't get the ambulances in and out because the roads were blocked. They were pulling bodies out as well but not that many. By today though it was a body every 10-20 minutes constantly through the day with only about 5 survivors.

Beichuan is unreachable. They do not have a real road into the city but finally finished cutting a new one today. So yesterday there were a few teams down below but not many as they just couldn't get there. It is a 40 minute walk down to the city. They were getting a few out but it wasn't until today about 4pm when they got almost an entire division into the city to start the rescue effort. But what is really needed is heavy machinery which they were preparing to take down but even if they got it down they are unable to get it where it is REALLY needed. They have to start at the edge of town and work in which is slow and very difficult. During our time there one of the survivors we found was buried under a mound of debris 13 meters tall and behind at least 3 slabs of concrete at the foundation of 2 different building. All we could do was alert the army and hope they could start a whole to him (which was very precarious work as the only way was to get under a building tilted at 45 degree angle and start hacking risking the 13 meters of debris falling on to us). There were a lot of people crying for help and you could hear them but then you couldn't. So you could never narrow down a location enough to know where to start digging.

The town is worse than you could imagine. There are cars on top of 7 story buildings and you can't tell if you are standing on 2 buildings or 10 buildings, they have so completely collapsed into each other. The odor was horrendous and I will spare many of the details. We were solely looking for live people but every now and then all we could do was to move the husband of a crying wife as she so desperately wanted to get him out from the concrete slab. It was very hard work to be climbing up and around and over, there were fires burning under the rubble and we were working mainly without safety gear. There is even more devastation outside the city but you have to hike out to those areas and it is impossible to do at this point.

There will be those few miracles but as we approach the 4th day most people will not get beyond the 3rd and the 5th day is pretty much the absolute extreme. The first day was a rescue operation but by the second it turned into clean-up. I saw 3 truck loads of bodies just from the middle school (and those are the ones I saw- was in Beichuan for 4 hours).

Our organization Heart to Heart in association with the Red Cross is preparing to start efforts in Mianyang city with IDP's (internally displaced persons=refugee) and maybe even start working with the hospitals but so far it has been very difficult to get permission.

Thank you muyongshi.

The poor kids who had their legs amputated all died.... http://news.qq.com/a/20080516/000533.htm

one trapped girl was uninjured, but died after the amputation....

China: Quake death toll could reach 50,000

It's just getting worse.

Muyongshi, thanks for reporting back, but what a sad and depressing story.

... but what a sad and depressing story.

Indeed. Except for Muyongshi’s own personal part of the story, which is inspirational for language learners who couldn’t hope for a more constructive opportunity to use their language skills, given the tragedy of nature that occurred.

Meanwhile, more bad news and more hopeful news from CNN: "A strong aftershock hit parts of China already devastated by an earthquake Friday, triggering landslides, blocking roads, knocking out phone lines and burying vehicles, state-run media reported .... Yet hope still emerged from amid the horror of the nation's worst disaster in recent years, with survivors pulled from the rubble four days after being buried by the 7.9 magnitude earthquake ...."

Many countries now send direct help, including Japan, Taiwan and Russia.

Just heard on BBC Radio that the official death toll now stands at over 21,000 dead.

This m*ther f*cking station never ceases its anti-China endeavors.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RRlqowtubfE

At 5:10 ->

何其感人的父女之情。

Just now he had a three minute minute of silence - it does make you think. Exactly 7 days prior 30,000 people met their death. While most of the people outside within sight were still moving and walking around, some people seemed truly touched.

Wendy, our assistant who helped take care of the customers, was in tears and said it best, "I'm thinking that some people have been buried for seven days without food or water and I can't even go one day without complaining about being hungry."

Some times we should take time to appreciate how good we have it. After all it is just sheer lock/random chance that you weren't in their situation.

Big events like this seem to drive the message home but the fact is that these kind of bad things happen to good people every day.

with car horns, fog horns and sirens going off all around me, the three minutes of silence were not silent here in dalian -- but it was surely moving. some people were still walking around, but all traffic stopped. very touching.

Today in the afternoon, in a foreign trade QQ group, we kept the three minutes of silence with people from different cities during work, yes, very touching.

Some times we should take time to appreciate how good we have it. After all it is just sheer lock/random chance that you weren't in their situation.

Agreed. 活在当下，心存感激，惜福惜缘（sorry, cannot translate it into English）.

Big events like this seem to drive the message home but the fact is that these kind of bad things happen to good people every day.

When parents of dead people are interviewed on the news, none of them ever say, "he had it coming" so we can never be certain. In addition, with 30,000 people dead, odds are some of them were bad, but I agree with the sentiment.

This story - impressive enough anyway - adds weight to the theories that a lot of school collapses were due to poor building quality.

What does everyone reckon about the three days of mourning thing? I think an official period of mourning is appropriate, but I'm a bit dubious about the enforcement via the ban on entertainment venues opening, online gaming, etc. People were already doing what they felt they could / what was appropriate, and I'm not sure it was necessary for the government to pipe up and tell people how to mourn.

An impressive story indeed. This part I found quite sad:

At the highway, they met astonished officials who feared the whole school had been wiped out.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/may/21/chinaearthquake.china

A Chinese blogger and TV commentator, Li Chengpeng, said he had spoken to the project manager.

Here is the blog mentioned in the article:

http://blog.sina.com.cn/s/blog_46e7ba41010091pk.html

李承鹏

北川邓家“刘汉小学”无一死亡奇迹背后的真相

因此下面我只能用X先生来代指为什么“刘汉希望小学”在这次大地震中成为唯一没有压死学生的学校？或者说奇迹最开始的一步是什么，我得知以下内情：

一、十年前，刘汉和孙晓东对下属X先生说，“亏什么不能亏教育，这次你一定要把好质量关，要是楼修不好出事了，你就从公司里走人吧”。

二、十年前一天，监理工程的X发现施工公司的水泥有问题，含泥土太多，因为X曾经是生产水泥的一家公司的副老总，经他手灌注的水泥至少有五十万吨，是绝对的行家，所以他要求施工公司老总必须把沙子里的泥冲干净，也不能用扁平的石子，从建筑专业而言，扁平石子混在水泥灌注过程中是灾难，水泥结实度大打折扣，他对施工队大发雷霆，愣让他们把沙子里的泥冲干净，把扁平石头全部拣走。

It is very sad! Outside of 北川 where they set up there base of operations was a small place called 任家坪, the only building that really came down was the Middle School.

I also had a Chinese friend note how many schools had come down and said it's so horrible when the houses we live in are so good but the school's are such bad quality, it should be the other way around.

For those who haven't seen them yet, here is a set of amazing, and very moving comics, depicting several different events that happened in the aftermath of the earthquake. Some will make you laugh, others will make you cry. Those in China may need to view them via proxy.

excellent comics.

Great comics. Thanks imron.