May 14, 2008 1:55

More Terror For A Battered City

Just a brief follow-up to my previous post on Dujiangyan. Xinhua News Agency is now reporting that serious cracks have been found in a dam upstream of the earthquake ravaged city. It's hard to imagine a place less capable of sustaining floodwaters right now.

May 14, 2008 12:06

In The Disaster Zone

Paramilitary troops clear a collapsed building. The red square at right is a wedding photo still hanging from an exposed wall

Here’s our latest piece on the town of Dujiangyan, one of the cities hit by Monday’s earthquake in Sichuan. My colleague Lin Yang and I visited there yesterday and returned again today. It’s hard to pin down the feelings in the city. There was the sadness of families outside collapsed buildings, waiting for news of loved ones trapped inside. There is the shock of seeing corpses lined up along the sidewalk. There’s the anger of families who lost their children in collapsed schools and wonder why so many public buildings collapsed. There was inspiration in the caravans of volunteers who drove out to help and donate food, so many that they had to be stopped on the highway from Chengdu to keep them from overrunning the disaster area.

Cars packed with bottled water and instant noodles mixed on the highway with the huge green military trucks bringing more troops to help with rescue efforts. Along the roadsides there are young soldiers slumped over, trying to get a minute of sleep before they return to moving debris by hand. There are also urban management officers who sit in their cars and appear to get all the rest they need. One man, the father of a boy who escaped from a collapsing school, said that the officers—who are something between police and meter maids—were reluctant to offer any help.

Dujiangyan is filled with collapsed apartment buildings, and many structures have suffered obvious damage. As a result much of the city sleeps out under tents. People are either too scared to go home, or have no home to return to. Despite all the destruction there are still some signs of life as usual. People laugh and play cards, happy perhaps that they’ve avoided the fate of so many others around here. I talked with one man in a food line who was waiting with a hundred or so others. “I look forward to life getting back to normal, to the city going back to work,” he said. It seems like it’ll be a long time before that happens.

May 14, 2008 4:59

20,000 and counting...

As the death toll rises to 20,000 or more, more focus will inevitably come to the quality of construction in the towns and villages in rural Sichuan. One of the things that the world is being reminded of in this disaster—and the United States, in particular, needs to be reminded of this-- is that China is still a very poor country, albeit one getting less poor year by year. Compare the way buildings are designed and built in wealthy (and earth quake prone) Japan, versus how they are built in poor provinces of China. A good piece in the UK’s Guardian gets at some of the anger amidst the grief in a small Sichuan town.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/may/14/china.naturaldisasters2

May 13, 2008 10:39

Sichuan Earthquake Donation: More Info

A good number of people responded to the previous post with alternative ways of contributing money, including by Pay Pal and through outfits other than the Red Cross. Rather than reproduce it all here, I'd direct anyone interested in donating to the comments section of the previous post, which features a number of useful links and information on some that are broken or overwhelmed. Many thanks to readers for posting them.

Separately, I am afraid that the death toll will be very much higher than it is at present, possibly approaching 100,000. Austin is in the disaster area right now, and from what he says and from reading other reports, it's clear that many tens of thousands of people are still buried under collapsed buildings and that despite the enormous efforts made to mobilize resources for the relief effort, time is running out. Desperate, agonizing times for the families of the victims, many of whom understandably feel they can't leave their loved ones alone while there is still a chance, however remote, they could be rescued.

May 13, 2008 2:37

Sichuan Earthquake: How to Donate

Reader Nianqingri suggests posting information about how to donate. This comes courtesy of the shanghaiist website:

"For those who are looking to contribute to current aid efforts underway, you can now donate money to the Red Cross Society of China which has formed a disaster relief working group to be dispatched to the earthquake-stricken Wenchuan County in Sichuan.

They have also published an emergency relief hotline, along with bank account information to receive donations to assist their cause:

Account name: Red Cross Society of China
开户单位：中国红十字会总会

For those who want to donate in RMB: you can send money to the RMB account at the Industrial and Commercial Bank of China branch below:
人民币开户行: 中国工商银行 北京分行东四南支行
人民币账号: 0200001009014413252

For those who want to donate in foreign currency, you can send money to the foreign currency account at the CITIC Bank branch below:
外币开户行：中信银行酒仙桥支行
外币账号: 7112111482600000209

Hotline: (8610) 65139999
Online donations: Red Cross Society of China website: www.redcross.org.cn
Click the tab for online donations "