Posted on 05/12/2008 12:27:28 AM PDT by Lijahsbubbe
An earthquake measuring 7.8 on the Richter scale has hit China's Sichuan province. The tremor was felt across the entire region - shaking buildings in the capital, Beijing, as well as the Thai capital, Bangkok, and Hanoi, the capital of Vietnam. US Geological Survey said the quake struck 57 miles north-west of the city of Chengdu at 2.29pm local time (6.28am GMT).
Some 10 million people live in Chengdu.
thanks for your praise, I will be happy to stay here.
Good point, DB. With all the people still remaining trapped, and all the recovery efforts they still need to complete, plus the rain and bad weather, and threat of more rock and mudslides, it sounds as if the onsite responders have their hands full.
I pray that China will either be able to do it all themselves very quickly, or quickly develop whatever trust they feel they need to allow other countries to help in all recovery effots. Time is critical right now for any survivors still awaiting rescue.
Thank you bd476,you are so kindly,In fact,I wanna be an architect.
Hi, Linc,
I did not have a child until I was 50, so, don’t give up, if that is what you want! Anyway, speaking of work, I have to go to it soon. But, I’ll check back on the new thread, tonight, if I get a chance.
I do agree the main focus is the situation of the earthquake victims, and I hope our Chinese friends can continue to help with that on the new thread.
Now Prime minister Wen Jiabao arrived Wen Chuan——center site of the earthquake.
Till now ,all of the sites suffered from the earthquake are reachable,and one of American relief team join the rescue( the chinese name of that american team is “heart with heart”,sorry for I don’t know the american name),and Wen Jiabao thanks to american people and government.
Because earthquake area is a mountainous zone,before the roads restored ,no matter how many army rallyed nearby,their have no way to go to the right place.Chinese army lack of helicopters,now some of them arrived in the right sites by feet.
dear friend,I think you needn’t worry about us.
perhaps you want to know why so many chinese come to here,let me tell you the reason:
in china we have a very famous forum www.tianclub.com,in that place one post show us many american show they regrets and pray for chinese victims in www.freerepublic.com ,and then we start to know this forum,so we want say thanks to you and share more info to ameican friends.
Now chinese people suffered from the earthquake,but we won’t ignore the charity from USA,your noble virtus are highly appreciated.
Today,China allow all of the legal religions,Islamic,Christain,Buddhism wide spread in China,I guess you could update some new info in China.But I totally understand what you worried about,because 30 years ago China goverment forbiden all of the religions.
In fact,many chinese virtues are similiar to Christain codes,we share the same world,suffered the same pain.Hoping we will have a big future together
Here's another aftermath photo taken from roughly the same angle, you can find the same dark redish building at the lower left corner, the S-shaped winding road and a few pinkish buildings that are left standing. 
for more "before & after" photos, check here:
http://bbs2.news.163.com/bbs/baoliao/76211737.html
I am chinese too, i was told by other cyber dude to log in here to see how friendly and sympathetic you Americans are towards those Chinese people currently suffering the unexpected earthquake. However, surprisingly, i have found that i , like some other Chinese people, are called the agent of sb and the only thing for us coming here is to influence you. I dont know what makes you think that way. we dont tend to influence anyone here, and we are not that influenctial. we only hope Americans could take look at the earthquake in human terms , not any more, thanks.
I FORM CHIAN
I am chinese too, i was told by other cyber dude to log in here to see how friendly and sympathetic you Americans are towards those Chinese people currently suffering the unexpected earthquake. However, surprisingly, i have found that i , like some other Chinese people, are called the agent of sb and the only thing for us coming here is to influence you. I dont know what makes you think that way. we dont tend to influence anyone here, and we are not that influenctial. we only hope Americans could take look at the earthquake in human terms , not any more, thanks.
Very touching post communion.
Why?
Perhaps I can try to explain. Free Republic is a website that has many long-standing members. Sometimes people come on here just to disrupt things and they have a new sign up date.As a result, the members get protective of this site.
It's very unusual to have so many same-day-sign up members posting at once, much less so many from a foreign country, so alot of people questioned it. It doesn't necessarily have anything to do with you being Chinese.
arasina,just thank you I can say.I wish you have a good day.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_ev0EHFPXqo
more videos with translations
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LtDiD1tnff0
I was reading about that here:
HANWANG, China - Thousands of Chinese soldiers rushed on Wednesday to repair a dam badly cracked by the country's massive earthquake, while rescuers arrived for the first time in the epicenter of the disaster. China's top economic planning body said that the quake had damaged 391 mostly small dams. It left "extremely dangerous" cracks in the Zipingpu Dam upriver from the earthquake-hit city of Dujiangyan and some 2,000 soldiers were sent to repair the damage, the official Xinhua News Agency said.
Xinhua said Dujiangyan would be "swamped" if major problems emerged at the dam.
He Biao, the director of the Aba Disaster Relief headquarters in northern Sichuan province, said there were also concerns over dams closer to the epicenter.
"Currently, the most dangerous problems are several reservoirs near Wenchuan," he said, according to a transcript on the CCTV Web site.
"There are already serious problems with the Tulong Reservoir on the Min River. It may collapse. If that happens, it would affect several power plants below and be extremely dangerous," he said.
Rescuers who hiked in to the epicenter scoured flattened mountain villages for thousands of missing and buried victims, and the death toll of nearly 15,000 appeared likely to soar far higher.
Help also began to arrive helicopter in some of the hardest-to-reach areas, where some victims trapped for more than two days under collapsed buildings were still being pulled out alive. But the enormous scale of the devastation meant that resources were stretched thin, and makeshift aid stations and refugee centers were springing up over the disaster area the size of Belgium.
Leveled hospitals forced doctors and nurses to treat survivors in the street. Helicopters dropped food and medicine to isolated towns. Mourners burned money before rows of bodies, believing their lost relatives could use it in the afterlife.
Xinhua quoted government officials as saying rescuers who hiked Wednesday into the city of Yingxiu in Wenchuan county — the epicenter of the quake — found only 2,300 survivors in the town of about 10,000, with another 1,000 badly hurt.
The official death toll rose Wednesday to 14,866, Xinhua said, but it was not immediately clear if that number included the 7,700 reported dead in Yingxiu. In Sichuan province alone, another 25,788 people were buried and 1,405 were missing, provincial vice governor Li Chengyun said, according to Xinhua.
Twelve Americans were found safe near the epicenter of the quake.
A spokeswoman for the World Wildlife Fund said the 12 members of the wildlife group were reached by satellite phone earlier in the day. The team was near the world's most famous panda preserve in Wolong, whose pandas were reported safe Tuesday.
Unlike previous natural disasters in China, official media have reported prominently on the quake and state TV canceled regular programming to run 24-hour coverage.
Scenes of destruction and death have been shown, along with prominent focus on Premier Wen Jiabao, who rushed Monday to Sichuan to oversee the rescue work. He has been shown crawling into collapsed buildings to urge survivors to hang on with impassioned pleas, and seen reassuring children who had lost parents.
Wen was there when one 3-year-old girl trapped for more than 40 hours under the bodies of her parents was pulled to safety Wednesday in Beichuan region, Xinhua said.
Rescuers found Song Xinyi on Tuesday morning, but were unable to pull her out right away due to fears the debris above her would collapse. She was fed and shielded from the rain until rescuers extricated her from the rubble.
Elsewhere, a 34-year-old woman who was eight months pregnant was rescued after spending 50 hours under debris in Dujiangyan.
"It's a miracle brought about by us all working together," said Sun Guoli, fire chief of the nearby provincial capital Chengdu, who supervised the rescue.
The show of official empathy was aimed at reassuring the public about the government's response and also showing the world the country is ready to host the Beijing Olympics in August. Wednesday's leg of the Olympic torch relay in the southeastern city of Ruijin began with a minute of silence.
President Hu Jintao presided over an emergency meeting of the Communist Party's highest body Wednesday, the second such meeting since the quake happened. Hu, also secretary-general of the party, urged the military, police and others to rush to the disaster area to help.
The death toll from the quake was expected to rise when rescuers reach other towns in Wenchuan county that remained cut off.
"The Communist Party Central Committee has not forgotten this place," Wen said after flying by helicopter to Wenchuan, adding that some 50 injured people had been airlifted from the area.
Relief efforts were aided in their third day by the clearing of storms that had prevented flights over some of the worst-hit towns. Military helicopters seen flying north over Dujiangyan, and Xinhua said some had airdropped food, drinking water and medicine to Yingxiu.
East of the epicenter in the town of Hanwang, the smell of incense hung over a crowd of sobbing relatives who walked among some 60 bodies wrapped in plastic, some covered with tributes of branches or flowers.
Nearby, rescuers carried more bodies out of a makeshift morgue at the Dongqi sports arena. People from the town and surrounding areas packed into blue tents provided by relief officials. A Western-style clock tower in the town center had stopped at 2:27 — the time the quake hit.
The Mianzhu No. 3 Hospital was obliterated, and the seven-story main Hanwang Hospital collapsed. Surviving medical staff set up a triage center in the driveway of a tire factory, but could only provide basic care.
"The first day hundreds of kids died when a school collapsed. The rest who came in had serious injuries. There was so little we could do for them," said Zhao Xiaoli, a nurse at Hanwang Hospital.
Emergency vehicle sirens sounded every few minutes. An ambulance drove in, delivering a man pulled from the rubble and covered in dust.
"There will be a lot more people. So many still haven't been found," said Zhao.
Disorienting episodes added to the struggle for survival in much of the disaster zone. The Mianyang city government ordered its 700,000 residents to evacuate all buildings between 4 p.m. and 6 p.m. because an aftershock was predicted.
In Chengdu, water to some parts of the city was cut for repairs, touching off a rumor that the supply was contaminated. People began hoarding water and water pressure citywide dropped before a senior official went on TV to deny anything was wrong.
___ Associated Press writers Christopher Bodeen and Bill Foreman in Dujiangyan contributed to this report.
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