Rescuers search the rubble of the collapsed Juyuan middle school.
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.
She hasn't checked in yet and my wife is very concerned about her safety, even though I told her is is a long ways away.
Please keep posting on Free Republic. My daughter tells me that our news gives us a very distorted picture about life inside of China.
Of course, they also give the world a very distorted picture about life inside of America! That's why Free Republic is such a great news forum so people can bypass the media filter!
Knock off the stupidity
http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/china/2008-05/13/content_6679321.htm
Quake buries 900 students, over 60 confirmed dead
(this one says it was a 6 story school building)
(Xinhua)
Updated: 2008-05-13 05:10
DUJIANGYAN, Sichuan — As of 3 a.m. on Tuesday, rescuers had recovered more than 60 bodies from the debris of a high school building that collapsed and buried almost 900 students in Monday’s earthquake in southwest China.
The tragedy occurred at around 2:30 p.m. at Juyuan Middle School in Juyuan Township of Dujiangyan City, Sichuan Province, about 100 kilometers from the epicenter in Wenchuan County.
Teachers and students of 24 classes were having classes then and most of them were buried in ruins, a teacher who only gave her surname as Cai said.
Cai said the collapsed six-story building is home to the classrooms of the 8th- and 9th-graders.
Premier Wen Jiabao, who arrived in the provincial capital Chengdu by plane on Monday evening, visited the school site on Monday night.
Wen told the devastated parents, who were waiting for the news on their children in rain, that the government would never give up rescue effort so long as there was hope for the trapped to survive.
“More than 1,000 people are participating rescue operation at the site now, and later, another 1,400 professional rescuers will arrive for help,” said Wen.
“Some of the trapped still have chance to survive and we will go all out to rescue them,” he said.
Rescuers said they could still hear some buried students calling for help. Eight excavators and five cranes were brought in for rescue work and an ambulance waited.
“Dozens of rescued students have been sent to hospital,” said a rescuer.
The collapse site was isolated by security line. On a black board erected at the school playground wrote the 28 names of the identified victims. Some 20 students, lowering their head in tears, stood quietly hand in hand nearby.
“We want to hold a vigil for the schoolmates passed away,” said a student who declined to give his name.
A tearful mother said her son, 9th-grader Zhang Chengwei, was buried in the ruins.
Two girls said they escaped because they had “run faster than others”.
“It was around 2:30 pm, and the building suddenly began to rock back and forth,” one of them said.
“We ran out of the house when the quake hit,” said Gao Shangyuan, a villager who lives close to the school and helped with the rescue work.
Gao and other villagers helped dozens of students out of the ruins. “Some had jumped out of the window and a few others ran down the stairs that did not collapse.”
In addition, an unknown number of students were also reported buried after buildings collapsed at five other schools in the province’s Deyang City, where a quake measuring 5.4 on the Richter scale occurred at 2:21 p.m. on Monday, according to the Sichuan provincial seismological bureau.
Local government officials are assessing the situation and rescuers are searching for the trapped students.
Deyang is about 58 kilometers from the provincial capital of Chengdu. Communications and the electricity supply in the quake-affected areas were cut after the quake.
Sichuan provincial education authorities have required schools and kindergartens in the quake-hit areas to close from Tuesday till further notice.
The quake, which measured 7.8 on the Richter scale and was felt in much part of the country, has killed more than 8,700 nationwide by Monday night.
I hate you,why are you so cruel?I just get through the worst day in my life.It isn’t funny at all.
Welcome to FR - it is good for people in our countries to talk one on one to each other. I am so sad for the people hurt and suffering there, and hope that help arrives for them soon.
PS; one would say "pray", not "prey", because "pray" is the expression of appealing to God, "prey" is an animal hunted by others.
Not a belt?
Texan By God.
Boss brought back whole stack of taxi cards for getting around. It took him three weeks to find meat (not pig ears) to eat.
The military is around because there has just been a natural disaster of 7.8 purportions. And why would the censor news coverage of an earthquake? I've been watching it on TV all day. If you see a reporter being pushed away it is for the same reason as here...the dang reporter is going to get themselves or someone else in danger interfering or being where they are.
Get out the tin foil hats folks. We got a winner here.
Knock off the moderating.
thanks for your concern...
i am reading chinese news, the official news 10min ago say the number is close to 100 handred... but the center of quake, WenChuan county, not rescue team can enter, all the communications are shut up..
i have been up all the night in China, praying.
this is the biggest disaster i ever experience in my country, i am crying..
All right. I’m moving along. Don’t be such a baby next time...
I don’t know why helicopters are not being used... All I know is that it’s raining there. And the region is filled with gorges which are very fragile now...
Oh. About 20000 military troops are already in the disaster area. And 24000 soldiers are also transportted there by air. The rescure is begun... Thank goodness...
He's not. He's using it to help U.S. businesses that will be supplying goods and services.
Or perhaps you are correct and all the relief business dollars should go to companies and farmers in other countries.
I’ve seen that picture on the internet, but it looked to me like that “torso” was actually a child who was being rescued alive. It appeared to me that some rescuer placed a helmet on the child to protect him.
I’m really disgusted with the news here right now. Everything is still all about the disaster of Hillary and Obama and not about China and Myanmar.
Welcome to Free Republic. Nice to have your input.
Please do not listen to the irrational people on here that are giving you grief or consider it representative of the entire FR community. There are a few on here that are real war mongers when it comes to discussion about China.
The world is the same all over. I am sure you know that there are people there that are also rude and beligerent. Same thing here.
What are you studying? (and please don;t say thermo nuclear war LOL)
How far is the epicenter from you? I am so sorry this is happening to you right now. Most Americans can relate because it felt like this on 9-11.
CNN has some new video coming up
that’s the regular CNN not the HNN version.
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