Posted on 05/25/2008 7:44:51 AM PDT by DeaconBenjamin
Cracks run on the top of a dam in Wenchuan, China's southwest Sichuan Province May 20, 2008.
CHENGDU, China – Nearly 70 dams scarred by the force of China's most powerful earthquake in three decades were in danger of bursting, the government said Sunday, while looming rains added to worries about relief efforts for millions of homeless survivors.
The confirmed death toll from the May 12 quake rose to 62,664, with another 23,775 people missing, Cabinet spokesman Guo Weimin said. Premier Wen Jiabao has said the number of dead could surpass 80,000.
A magnitude 5.8 aftershock rattled the quake area Sunday afternoon, the U.S. Geological Survey said, causing office towers to sway in Beijing, some 1,300 kilometres away. There was no immediate information on any new damage caused.
State television reported Sunday that a survivor was rescued alive Friday, more than 11 days after the earthquake hit.
Xiao Zhihu, an 80-year-old bedridden man, was rescued in Mianzhu north of the provincial capital Chengdu after being trapped in his collapsed house, the report said. He survived because his wife was able to get food to him through the rubble, but there were no further details given or a reason for the two-day delay in reporting the rescue.
The Water Resources Ministry said in a statement Sunday that 69 dams in central Sichuan province were in danger of collapse, without giving any further details.
The government had earlier said some 391 dams had been affected by the quake, mostly small structures.
Sichuan is home to the world's largest water project, the Three Gorges dam located about 560 kilometres east of the epicentre, which authorities have said was not damaged in the quake.
Meanwhile, the State Meteorological Bureau said Sunday that parts of Sichuan would suffer "heavy and even in some areas torrential rains" later Sunday and Monday, warning of possible mudslides.
Some people paused Sunday to attend church almost two weeks after the quake hit. In Chengdu, worshippers gathered at the Ping'an Bridge Catholic church to say prayers for the victims.
A collection plate was also passed around.
One worshipper, retiree Liang Biqing, 58, said the disaster had changed her views on China's place in the world and shown her that people globally all share the same troubles.
"This shows that there are no barriers, no nationalities, when it comes to disasters," she said.
China desperately needs tents to house quake victims, with more than 15 million homes destroyed in the disaster.
The first of eight Russian military transport planes carrying tents, medicine and food landed Sunday in Chengdu, the country's ITAR-Tass news agency said. Other aid flights were to arrive by Monday.
Sri Lanka has also sent tents, clothes and other relief materials, Xinhua said.
He's an ass + it's his fault = Asphalt!
Yes and no. Jane’s Defence (that’s how the Brits spell it) Weekly states the PLA (People’s Liberation Army, which encompasses aviation and naval branches as well) had 150 strategic fighter jets in 2000; by 2012, they will have more than 1500. They have also purchased at least one former Soviet nuclear sub and some European (maybe German?) built diesel subs. I believe they also have Kiev-class aircraft carriers. In photos, I noticed several Blackhawk helicopters, too. They are definitely a force with which to be reckoned.
That being said, there have been problems with getting equipment to the quake-ravaged areas. Although transport infrastructure is much better than 20 years ago, many roads have been damaged and others are clogged with the homeless and building debris.
In the top photos, it looks like the concrete was covered with about an inch of stucco and that is what is cracking.
My first thought was that they troweled the fines to the top but you don’t trowell down inside the forms.
It looks like the surface was finished to provide a better appearance to a rough formed finish. There are also what appear to be concrete pavers that are loose and damaged. I didn’t see any structural cracks in the dam.
The fault along the earthen dam is of real concern.
I would definitely agree with you on their public works projects. However, I watched several commercial buildings (hotels and office towers) going up in Shanghai and all were typical of modern buildings in London, New York, LA or Hong Kong. Even the construction management charts looked very familiar. It was rather amusing that someone had circled a bar chart for the electrical work on the CM board of an office building and in Chinese it said, “Stupid worm, this is going to delay the project by 5 weeks!” Whoever wrote that must’ve worked on a project in Chicago.
Agreed. If it was a public works project, they probably took the cheapest route. I thought the surface was clay tile. They definitely wouldn’t spend time trowelling.
The worrying thing about the fault is that it’s probably even bigger somewhere below.
......They definitely wouldn’t spend time trowelling.....
My Asian experience is different. I’ve seen the absolute worst formed concrete and concrete block work imagineable parged over and troweled smooth. I’ve seen many examples where they recreated the morter joints with tools in the freshly applied stucco to make it look like the concrete block construction they parged over.
As labor rates increase in China, much of that is going by the wayside. That being said, you might be right depending upon when these particular dams were built. Although it’s hard to believe such a large dam would use concrete blocks as we know them.
In 1987, My cousin, who was an engineer for the China Civil Engineering Construction Corporation (a quasi-government public works company), said the CCECC was about 20 years behind the times as far as the engineering profession. Even 20 years before that, the lateral force of that volume of water would require some interlocking and reinforced structure. Surprisingly, Chinese engineers were somehow getting Dutch, German and Canadian structural and civil engineering periodicals during the Cultural Revolution.
Ping
Under Communism, sound engineering principles are replaced with budgets and deadlines. The ChiComs are paying the price and if the west bails them out, nothing will change.
Sounds like New Orleans; no?
Thanks for the ping, Travis.
I believe they are trying to move the folks out of the way of the damaged dams, but it looks like a herculean task. Right now they don't even have enough temp housing or tents for all the folks they've gotten to, and it seems there are a lot they haven't reached yet with other than teams on foot with whatever they can carry. I've also noticed that the CCP organs are back to culling their folks comments -- didn't think it would last long, but surprised that it happened at all.
I read online that many of these China dams are just concrete shells (walls) that are filled with loose debris and then capped.
......Although it’s hard to believe such a large dam would use concrete blocks as we know them.......
I wasn’t very clear and perhaps mixed descriptions of two different types of construction. The dams are as you noted massive reinforced concrete.
My intention was to note that reinforced concrete surfaces are commonly stoccoed or parged to hide imperfections in the concrete. In the same manner, concrete block structures are stuccoed to hide the uneven block work.
I have never been to China but have traveled elsewhere in Asia and seen the poor block and concrete work.
Aftershock flattens 71,000 homes
52 minutes ago
A powerful aftershock destroyed tens of thousands of homes in central China, causing hundreds of new casualties and straining recovery efforts from the country’s worst earthquake in three decades.
The fresh devastation came after a magnitude 5.8 aftershock - among the most powerful recorded since the initial May 12 quake, according to the US Geological Survey. The China National Seismic Network said the aftershock was the strongest of dozens in the nearly two weeks after the disaster.
~SNIP~
http://ukpress.google.com/article/ALeqM5hKTHEtvVj5rUVa0fHki_h3PEcWsA
No kidding. Back in 1990, I had a Chinese professor spend the summer in my 3rd floor apt. while doing research at a local university. When he left, I offered to buy his wife and daughter some makeup and other girly stuff. He declined, saying that they would be ridiculed. Now when you look at pictures of Chinese women, they are all made up, stylishly dressed and with fashionable haircuts.
It used to be that when you walked around campuses, you could tell the mainland Chinese because the men generally wore black pants and white shirts and the women had very dowdy clothes - and these were young people. The mainland Chinese and the Taiwanese were polar opposites as far as appearance, with the Taiwanese quite stylish. Now, the Chinese students I've met over the past 5 years or so drive cars, dress fashionably, have cellphones, and more tellingly, their parents have enough disposable income to send them some extra money. Obviously this isn't true for all Chinese, but the ones who make it to American academe certainly are quite different than they were not 15-20 years ago.
It was never that bad. Up till the Communists took over, mainlanders moved freely back between Hong Kong and Macau and the mainland. After the Communists took over, border controls had to be instituted. Even with these border controls in place (combined with generous immigration quotas for mainlanders), Hong Kong's population ballooned seven-fold - from 1m people (around the time of the Communist victory in 1949) to 7m people by the late 90's. Given that Hong Kong's birthrate is less than 1 per family (2 is replacement rate), you can probably guess where the rise in population came from - Chinese migrants.
No, New Orleans was giving tens of millions of dollars to a local levy board which used the funds to build interstate exits for casinos and multiple other local projects that didn't have anything to do with why the money was allocated.
I think you're getting carried away. China lost perhaps 10m people in WWII and the Chinese Civil War (slightly over 2% of the population then). It's still standing. Heck - Germany lost 10% of its population in WWII. It's still standing. I wouldn't break out the bubbly just yet.
Photo ops do not make for effectiveness. They are photogenic, and camera ready. What I find interesting is that the military honchos shown are consistently pudgy. The roads you see pictured are not representative - especially the ones from the official media. I have been on bone-rattling rides on dirt roads between relatively developed urban areas. (Although it has to be said that the roads between most cities and the provincial capitals are pretty good - it's the ones between non-capital cities that are iffy).
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