Surviving
China’s Latest Earthquake, but Afraid to Go Home
New
York Times
4/22/2013
YUXI, China — Many residents of this tiny village in the
mountainous region of southwest China spent Saturday night in tents and
makeshift shelters, too scared to sleep in their flimsy homes after an
earthquake killed 188 people early that morning.
Roofs buckled, walls tumbled and windows
broke after the earthquake shook houses and sent boulders tumbling down
mountain sides onto the narrow road that leads into this valley of Lushan
County near the epicenter of the earthquake, which Chinese authorities said had
a preliminary magnitude of 7.
The aftermath was not nearly as serious
as the 7.9-magnitude earthquake in 2008 that left more than 70,000 people dead
in the Wenchuan area. But villagers who work in Chengdu, about 100 miles away,
streamed back home Sunday morning, many on foot, the lucky ones on motorbikes,
to check on their homes.
Song Yuanqing, 43, a construction
worker, arrived back after a 22-hour trip to find his roof and the walls
unstable. “We would like to do something, but we can’t do anything,” Mr. Song
said as he sat with neighbors around an outdoor fire built by the village
leader in his backyard. Some people had slept under the machinery at a lumber
yard. The village leader, Gao Zaimeng, said his house — a two-story concrete
structure that is one of the best in town — shook violently. “More violent than
in 2008,” he said. Although his house was intact, he was too nervous to risk
sleeping or cooking inside, he said.
About 50 soldiers attached to the
People’s Liberation Army’s regional headquarters in Chengdu marched in
formation along the main village street, armed with shovels and picks to help
shore up buildings. In all, the government deployed about 7,000 soldiers and
People’s Armed Police officers to the affected area. By Saturday evening, there
were so many rescue workers in the area that the government asked volunteers to
stop coming.
China’s prime minister, Li Keqiang,
perhaps mindful of the criticism of the rescue efforts in 2008, flew to the
area and slept in a tent on Saturday evening in Lushan County.
The earthquake shook Sichuan Province at
8 a.m., when people were rising a little later than usual because schools and
universities were closed.
“We were just getting up and getting
dressed in our dormitory when the building shook, and I looked outside from our
seventh-floor window and saw a row of houses collapsed,” Xu Yan, 22, a student
at the Agricultural University in Ya’an, said in a telephone interview. “I have
never flown down the stairs so fast.”
The Chinese government said early Sunday
that the known death toll was 174, with most of the victims in Ya’an. The
ministry also said that about 5,700 people had been injured.
The United States Geological Survey said
that the earthquake occurred on the Longmenshan fault line, the same one
responsible for the 2008 quake. But more than 12 hours after the initial
tremor, the impact seemed to be far less severe.
Chinese radio quoted an unnamed official
who said, “We have a basic grasp of the overall disaster situation, and there
won’t be thousands or tens of thousands of fatalities.”
Rescue efforts were hampered by
landslides, and officials expressed concern about two barrier lakes that had formed
after debris blocked two waterways.
The tremors were felt in Chengdu, one of
China’s biggest cities and the capital of Sichuan Province. Residents described
water spilling out of home aquariums and objects like home water dispensers
falling to the floor.
Yang Yubing, an executive at a sculpture
factory in Baoxing County, one of the hardest-hit areas, said he was visiting
Chengdu when he felt the tremors. He immediately left on a seven-hour drive to
his home in Baoxing. But emergency workers stopped him when he got close to his
apartment, Mr. Yang said. “They said five or six kilometers of roads were
collapsed,” he said in a telephone interview. “We are all living in temporary
tents in the school.” Badly injured people were taken to hospitals by helicopter,
he said.
In the town of Longmen, another hard-hit
area within Ya’an’s jurisdiction, a resident, Zhang Yan, said 90 percent of the
buildings had collapsed.
“About 100 people died around here,” Ms.
Zhang said in a telephone interview. “Rescue crews have not yet arrived. There
is no water or electricity.”
Xinhua quoted a hospital official who
said scores of injured people were sprawled in front of the county hospital on
Saturday afternoon. Firefighters in Lushan County pulled 27 survivors from
collapsed buildings, Xinhua said.
The 2008 quake raised questions about
poorly constructed schools that collapsed and killed thousands of students.
That earthquake prompted an extensive
official relief effort and a passionate outpouring of volunteer help. But some
quake-stricken residents and observers criticized the government for sending
rescue efforts to the wrong places, or for failing to muster the equipment
needed to lift victims from under slabs of concrete and brick. Instead, many
troops and rescuers clambered over the rubble with sticks and spades.
This time, the government appears intent
on avoiding any accusations of lagging behind
In 2008, officials restricted
independent reporting on the disaster, but Ran Wang, a businessman, said he
hoped officials would allow greater transparency. “No censorship, no cover-ups
or control so the right of the people and society to be informed during natural
disasters is respected,” he wrote on his microblog account.
The Longmenshan fault line, which runs
between the Tibetan plateau and Sichuan Basin, is seismically active. Twelve
earthquakes with a magnitude of 5 or greater have occurred along the fault line
since 1900, said Jiang Haikun, an official with the China Earthquake
Administration.
Sichuan Province is also one of China’s
best-known habitats for pandas, and at the Bifengxia reserve, about six miles
north of Ya’an, workers said that 20 pandas in the park were safe. “We
inspected the panda area after the quake, and they were unaffected,” said Chen
Yong, the media relations officer of the reserve.
Summary
In April, 20th
2013 at 8a.m, there was an earthquake of 7.9 magnitudes which happened in
Southwest of China. Caused by that, about 188 citizens died. Also by this
earthquake, roof came down and walls fell. For proof in Ya’an 90% of homes were
gone. But compare to 2008’s earthquake, less people were dead. Even though less
people dead, still there are people a lot of who lost their house, so lot of
people slept in schools or in tent. Many people helped for volunteers and
police helped for rescue. However, many roads were blocked by debris, so it
took time to rescue.
Vocabulary
Buckled– almost
same as collapse.
Collapse- to fall
down
Tremor- to shake
Fatalities- a death that is caused by an accident or in a war.
Debris- pieces of wood, metal, brick, etc. that are left after something
has been destroyed.
