7.8 magnitude Quake jolts southwest China

[Bellamy]

Quake jolts southwest China, premier to visit scene

 

* 7.8 magnitude quake hits Sichuan province, China

 

* Premier Wen Jiabao on way to epicentre

 

* Rescue teams ready to go to scene (Adds quotes, details)

 

By Lindsay Beck

 

BEIJING, May 12 (Reuters) - An earthquake with a magnitude of 7.8 struck China's Sichuan province on Monday, less than 100 km (60 miles) from the provincial capital of Chengdu, followed by a series of smaller tremors.

 

There were no immediate reports of deaths or major damage.

 

The quake was felt across much of China and as far southwest as Bangkok, Thailand's capital, some 3,300 km (2,050 miles) away, where office buildings swayed for several minutes.

 

Premier Wen Jiabao was flying to Chengdu, a fast-growing metropolis of 10 million people and famous for its Giant Panda Breeding Research Base, state television said. President Hu Jintao had demanded that any injured are rescued immediately, Xinhua news agency said.

 

The city is around 1,300 miles (2,090 km) southwest of Beijing.

 

"All the buildings are swaying back and forth," said a university student in the central city of Wuhan, adding that people had rushed outside and one single-storey building had collapsed.

 

"We felt continuous shaking for about two or three minutes," said another office worker. "All the people in our office are rushing downstairs. We're still feeling slight tremblings."

 

An employee at the local newspaper in Mianyang in Sichuan said there had been several earthquakes. USGS said there had been an aftershock of magnitude 6.0 at 0643 GMT in roughly the same location and another at 0734 of magnitude 5.4.

 

One of China's tallest buildings, the Jinmao Tower in Shanghai, as well as other highrise buildings were ordered evacuated after the quake and aftershocks. Office workers in some buildings were later allowed to return.

 

HOSPITAL EVACUATED

 

"The air-conditioning unit fell off the wall. Vases are all broken," a resident in Mianyang, in Sichuan province, told Reuters.

 

"The sick in hospital have been moved outside to open fields. There is no electricity and no mobile phone reception. People are afraid of aftershocks."

 

Many workers poured from their buildings in Beijing's financial centre after a second quake, or aftershock, measuring 3.9 on the Richter scale, jolted the eastern Beijing suburb of Tongzhou, but there were no visible signs of damage. The subway system was unaffected.

 

The U.S. Geological Survey said on its website (http://earthquake.usgs.gov) that the main quake struck at 0628 GMT at a depth of 29 km (18 miles).

 

Sources said there was no immediate impact to the Three Gorges Dam project, the weight of whose massive reservoir, hundreds of kilometres from Chengdu, experts have said could increase the risk of tremors.

 

A source at the biggest refinery in western China, Lanzhou, said the plant also appeared unaffected by the quake.

 

An official with the Sichuan provincial seismic bureau said the epicentre of the quake was in Wenchuan county, in the Aba Tibetan and Qiang Autonomous Prefecture, a mountainous area populated mostly by Han Chinese but with sizeable Qiang and Tibetan populations.

 

RESCUE TEAMS READY

 

On Chinese state television, a reporter said that telephone calls to Wenchuan were not connecting. State TV also said the government was preparing to send rescue and aid teams to the region.

 

A receptionist at the Tibet Hotel in Chengdu said the hotel had evacuated its guests, but said things were "calm" there now. "It was very sudden and I am not sure what has happened elsewhere, but we are OK here," the receptionist said.

 

The quake was felt as far away as Vietnam and Thailand, startling office workers in high-rise buildings.

 

"We have a number of reports that high buildings along Sukhumvit and Sathorn roads (in Bangkok) felt the tremors, but there are no reports of damage," a geologist at Thailand's Meteorological Department told Reuters.

 

High-rise residential and office towers in the western suburbs of Vietnam's capital, Hanoi also shook for several seconds, witnesses said, but there was no visible damage. Hundreds of residents and office workers left the buildings as a precaution.

 

(Reporting by Jason Subler and Darren Schuettler; Writing by David Fox; Editing by Jeremy Laurence)

http://www.reuters.com/article/homepageCri...39734._CH_.2400

 

We can feel it in Beijing. It's 2,000KM away.

[Davey84]

WOW!! even in Bejing!!! I hope no one got hurt!!! I'm so glad we don't have earthquakes here!

[Krys]

omg i heard bout it damn that was one big earthquake

[nano]

I heard about it on the news....that's terrible.

[ByuSmurf]

When I saw the news, I thought of you, Bellamy! I am so glad you are safe!

The cities that were struck are the most populated in the WORLD!

I will pray for your continued safety and for the victims of this terrible tragedy!

[Bellamy]

I'm very far away from the quake center. But it's so big, even we can feel it.

[Davey84]

I just read that about 3000 to 5000 people are killed... how tragic!!

[Bellamy]

That number is far from final number. It's just the number we could get now. Actually the center of the earthquake is completely out of contact now.

[Bellamy]

Death toll in China earthquake rises to 7,600

 

By CHRISTOPHER BODEEN, Associated Press Writer 9 minutes ago

 

CHONGQING - A massive earthquake struck central China on Monday, killing more than 7,600 people and trapping nearly 900 students under the rubble of their school, state media reported.

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The official Xinhua News Agency said 80 percent of the buildings had collapsed in Beichuan county in Sichuan province after the 7.8-magnitude quake, raising fears the overall death toll could increase sharply.

 

The earthquake sent thousands of people rushing out of buildings and into the streets hundreds of miles away in Beijing and Shanghai. The temblor was felt as far away as Pakistan, Vietnam and Thailand.

 

Xinhua cited the Sichuan provincial government as saying 7,651 people died. The communist leadership said late Monday that "thousands" had died, and that the quake also had caused deaths in three other provinces.

 

The quake was one of the deadliest in three decades and posed a challenge to a government already grappling with discontent over high inflation and a widespread uprising among Tibetans in western China while trying to prepare for the Beijing Olympics this August.

 

It hit about 60 miles northwest of Chengdu in the middle of the afternoon when classrooms and office towers were full. There were several smaller aftershocks, the U.S. Geological Survey said on its Web site.

 

The temblor struck hilly country leading up to the Tibetan highlands, toppling buildings in small cities and towns in the largely rural area. About 1,200 pandas — 80 percent of the surviving wild population in China — live in several mountainous areas of Sichuan.

 

The earthquake occurred in an area with numerous fault lines that have triggered destructive temblor before. A magnitude 7.5 earthquake in Diexi, Sichuan that hit on August 25, 1933 killed more than 9,300 people.

 

Xinhua said 50 bodies had been pulled from the debris of the school building in Juyuan town but did not say if the children were alive. Xinhua reported students also were buried under five other toppled schools in Deyang city.

 

Xinhua said its reporters saw buried teenagers struggling to break loose from underneath the rubble of the three-story building in Juyuan "while others were crying out for help."

 

Two girls were quoted by Xinhua as saying they escaped because they had "run faster than others."

 

Photos showed heavy cranes trying to remove rubble from the ruined school. Other photos posted on the Internet and found on the Chinese search engine Baidu showed arms and a torso sticking out of the rubble of the school as dozens of people worked to free them, using their hands to move concrete slabs.

 

Calls into the city did not go through as panicked residents quickly overloaded the telephone system. The quake affected telephone and power networks, and even state media appeared to have few details of the disaster.

 

"In Chengdu, mobile telecommunication convertors have experienced jams and thousands of servers were out of service," said Sha Yuejia, deputy chief executive officer of China Mobile.

 

Although it was difficult to telephone Chengdu, an Israeli student, Ronen Medzini, sent a text message to The Associated Press saying there were power and water outages there.

 

"Traffic jams, no running water, power outs, everyone sitting in the streets, patients evacuated from hospitals sitting outside and waiting," he said.

 

Xinhua said an underground water pipe ruptured near the city's southern railway station, flooding a main thoroughfare. Reporters saw buildings with cracks in their walls but no collapses, Xinhua said.

 

The earthquake also rattled buildings in Beijing, some 930 miles to the north, less than three months before the Chinese capital was expected to be full of hundreds of thousands of foreign visitors for the Summer Olympics.

 

Many Beijing office towers were evacuated, including the building housing the media offices for the organizers of the Olympics, which start in August. None of the Olympic venues was damaged.

 

"I've lived in Taipei and California and I've been through quakes before. This is the most I've ever felt," said James McGregor, a business consultant who was inside the LG Towers in Beijing's business district. "The floor was moving underneath me."

 

In Fuyang, 660 miles to the east, chandeliers in the lobby of the Buckingham Palace Hotel swayed. "We've never felt anything like this our whole lives," said a hotel employee surnamed Zhu.

 

Patients at the Fuyang People's No. 1 Hospital were evacuated. An hour after the quake, a half-dozen patients in blue-striped pajamas stood outside the hospital. One was laying on a hospital bed in the parking lot.

 

Skyscrapers in Shanghai swayed and most office occupants went rushing into the streets.

 

In the Taiwanese capital of Taipei, 100 miles off the southeastern Chinese coast, buildings swayed when the quake hit. There were no immediate reports of injuries or damage.

 

The quake was felt as far away as the Vietnamese capital of Hanoi, where some people hurried out of swaying office buildings and into the streets downtown. A building in the Thai capital of Bangkok also was evacuated after the quake was felt there.

 

A magnitude 7.8 earthquake is considered a major event, capable of causing widespread damage and injuries in populated areas.

 

The last serious earthquake in China was in 2003, when a 6.8-magnitude quake killed 268 people in Bachu county in the west of Xinjiang.

 

China's deadliest earthquake in modern history struck the northeastern city of Tangshan on July 28, 1976, killing 240,000 people.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080512/ap_on_...a_earthquake_29

[Nikosn17]

Oh my... that's terrible. I heard it in the news. We also had an earthquake here in Bulgaria today... but it was just around 5 magnitude quake.

[Bellamy]

There were over 500 after shocks, at least 2 at 6.0 magnitude, and 5 between 5 to 5.9 magnitude.

[Nikosn17]

There were over 500 after shocks, at least 2 at 6.0 magnitude, and 5 between 5 to 5.9 magnitude.

 

That must have been awful I feel bad for the people that were there...

Edited May 12, 2008 at 03:59 PM by Nikosn17

[Bellamy]

China quake kills nearly 9,000, toll likely to soar

 

By Ben Blanchard 1 hour, 14 minutes ago

 

CHONGQING, China (Reuters) - China's most devastating earthquake in three decades killed nearly 9,000 people on Monday, with the toll likely to soar as authorities struggle to reach casualties in large areas cut off from relief.

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The earthquake that hit China's southwestern province of Sichuan killed 8,533 people, the official Xinhua news agency said on Monday, citing the provincial government.

 

The epicenter of the 7.8 magnitude quake was in a mountainous region about 100 km from Sichuan's capital Chengdu, a bustling city of 10 million.

 

"The road started swaying as I was driving. Rocks fell from the mountains, with dust darkening the sky over the valley," a driver for Sichuan's seismological bureau was quoted by Xinhua as saying, as he was driving near the epicenter.

 

The quake hit in the middle of the school day, toppling eight schools in the region. Chemical plants and at least one hospital were also flattened, trapping many hundreds, state media said.

 

About 900 teenagers were buried in the rubble of a collapsed three-storey school building in the Sichuan city of Dujiangyan.

 

Local villagers had already helped dozens of students out of the ruins and five cranes were excavating the site as anxious parents looked on, Xinhua said.

 

"Some buried teenagers were struggling to break loose from underneath the ruins while others were crying out for help," the agency said.

 

Nightfall, severed communications and blocked roads have hampered rescue efforts and the death toll was likely to rise significantly.

 

MANY BUILDINGS FLATTENED

 

An estimated 3,000 to 5,000 people were killed in Beichuan Qiang Autonomous County alone, state media said.

 

As many as 10,000 in Beichuan were feared injured and 80 percent of the buildings there had been destroyed, Xinhua said. There had been more than 300 aftershocks, state television said.

 

Beichuan's population is 161,000, meaning about one in 10 residents were killed or injured. The county is a part of Mianyang city, and about 160 km (100 miles) from the provincial capital, Chengdu.

 

Hundreds of people were buried in two collapsed chemical plants in Shifang in Sichuan, the online edition of the official Xinhua news agency said.

 

About 6,000 people were evacuated, Xinhua said, adding that more than 80 tonnes of highly corrosive liquid ammonia had leaked.

 

Hundreds of people were buried under rubble in Shifang in Sichuan as several schools, factories and dormitories collapsed during the quake, the official Xinhua news agency said.

 

Hundreds were also buried under rubble in a collapsed hospital in Dujiangyan city in Sichuan.

 

The quake's epicenter was in nearby Wenchuan, a mountainous county of about 100,000 people, but its force was enough to cause buildings to sway across China and as far away as the Thai capital Bangkok.

 

The Sichuan plain is one of China's most fertile agricultural areas, but it relies heavily on an irrigation system linked to the 2,000-year-old Dujiangyan flood control works.

 

Which means the quake could exacerbate inflation, already running at the fastest pace in 12 years.

 

The quake is also the worst to hit China in 32 years since the 1976 Tangshan earthquake in northeastern China where up to 300,000 died.

 

It has come at a bad time for China, which holds the Olympic Games in August, and has been struggling to keep a lid on unrest in ethnic Tibetan areas and the heavily Muslim northeastern Xinjiang region.

 

The U.S. Geological Survey said on its website (http://earthquake.usgs.gov) the main quake struck at 0628 GMT at a depth of 10 km (6 miles).

 

In Beijing and Shanghai, office workers poured into the streets as the tremor hit. In the capital, there was no visible damage and the showpiece Bird's Nest Olympic stadium was unscathed.

 

"ALL-OUT" RESCUE EFFORT

 

Premier Wen Jiabao arrived in Chengdu and President Hu Jintao ordered an "all-out" rescue effort, Xinhua reported.

 

Thousands of army troops and paramilitary People's Armed Police carrying medical supplies were also headed to the region, state television said. But a landslide had blocked a mountain road leading to Wenchuan, preventing troops from reaching the scene, state radio said.

 

In Washington, President George W. Bush said the United States was ready to help.

 

"I extend my condolences to those injured and to the families of the victims of today's earthquake. I am particularly saddened by the number of students and children affected by this tragedy.

 

"The United States stands ready to help in any way possible," Bush said in a statement.

 

At least 45 had died in Chengdu, Xinhua said, citing an official with the local seismological bureau. Another 600 people were injured, 58 of them critically, in the sprawling city.

 

Some 57 have been confirmed killed in northern Shaanxi, 48 in northwestern Gansu, 50 in Chongqing municipality, and one in Yunnan province, Xinhua said, citing the national headquarters of disaster relief.

 

(Additional reporting by Beijing and Shanghai bureaux; Editing by Nick Macfie and David Fogarty)

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20080512/wl_nm/quake_dc_19

[Krys]

I feel bad for the people that were there...

 

i do too

[dj4celine]

This is really sad and scary

[OnlyCeline]

When I saw the news, I thought of you, Bellamy! I am so glad you are safe!

The cities that were struck are the most populated in the WORLD!

I will pray for your continued safety and for the victims of this terrible tragedy!

 

 

Me too..I thought of Bellamy as well.. Glad you're safe there... I was also shock when I read the news...

So sad...

 

Belated Happy Birthday Billamy...

[Black Kitten]

after the Myanmar tragedy, now this? this is really bothering, the world is in trouble. really feel bad about the huge number of students being burried alive.

[Jacqui]

That's scary...I hope you're all ok...

[CelineAndRene]

My god, a terrible tragety!

[Koolan]

This is so horrible.

[Bellamy]

Quake region home of giant panda, the symbol of China

 

1 hour, 59 minutes ago

 

HONG KONG (AFP) - As China scrambled to cope Tuesday with the death and devastation from a massive earthquake that hit the country's southwest, the government made an important announcement.

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With the death toll climbing above 10,000 and foreign governments offering aid and cash to boost the rescue effort, the state-run Xinhua news agency said 63 giant pandas at two breeding centres near the quake zone were safe.

 

The fate of another 150 or so inmates of China's most famous panda park, the Wolong Giant Panda Protection and Research Centre, was unclear.

 

The 7.8-magnitude quake, which hit Sichuan province early Monday afternoon, reportedly shook the park, about three hours drive from Chengdu, the provincial capital.

 

Like many parts of Sichuan, the park could not be reached by telephone after the quake, which was felt thousands of kilometres (miles) away.

 

Xinhua earlier reported that 15 Britons were among 2,000 tourists stranded in the region and out of contact.

 

It quoted a local official as saying the British tourists were probably in Wolong. British authorities sent emergency personnel to the area to help with search and rescue efforts.

 

The panda has become central to China's tourism industry, with around 100,000 people a year visiting the Wolong park alone.

 

It is one of the world's most endangered species, with an estimated 1,600 in nature parks in Sichuan, Gansu and Shaanxi provinces, and 239 in captivity, Chinese media have said.

 

China is a signatory to the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES) which bans trade in the animal but does allow the Chinese government to use the panda to further its diplomatic ambitions, leasing them to zoos worldwide for millions of dollars and priceless international goodwill.

 

Last week, Chinese President Hu Jintao offered during a fence-mending trip to Japan to lend the country a male and female panda to replace an elderly male called Ling Ling that had just died at Tokyo's zoo.

 

The first panda diplomat was Ping Ping, who went to the former Soviet Union in 1957, and in 1972, pandas, also called Ling Ling, and Xing Xing went to the United States to cement newly-minted ties between Washington and Beijing.

 

Pandas draw crowds from London to Sydney to Hong Kong to Seoul at zoos that welcome the extra crowds, and revenue, they attract. San Diego zoo in 1999 successfully bred from the pair it rents on a 10-year, 10-million-dollar deal.

 

The panda is a member of the bear family and once inhabited wide swathes of mountainous southwestern China but fierce pressure from population growth and industrial development has pushed it into tiny forested regions that are still regularly encroached upon.

 

It eats only one species of bamboo and has become notoriously shy about mating, which has led to some creative efforts by researchers at breeding programmes to encourage reproduction.

 

Initiatives include giving male pandas the libido-enhancing drug Viagra and showing them videos of other pandas mating, dubbed panda porn.

 

The breeding programmes have claimed some success in recent years. According to domestic media, by the end of last year, the Wolong reserve had bred 130 pandas from an original 10.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20080513/sc_af...as_080513072840

 

I hope the pandas are ok.

[Bellamy]

China quake death toll nearly 12,000

 

JIANG YOU, China (CNN) -- The death toll in the massive earthquake that rocked central China is at nearly 12,000, officials say. It comes as teams of rescuers battling through rock and mudslides Tuesday arrived at the epicenter of the earthquake.

 

Wang Zhenyao of the Chinese Ministry of Civil Affairs said 11,922 people have died in the quake centered in Sichuan province.

 

A string of nearly 30 seismic aftershock jolts hit the province in the first 24 hours following Monday's quake and slowing the progress of 1,300-strong rescue teams. All of those quakes were magnitude 4.0 and above.

 

Military doctors and soldiers arrived around midday and began their search for survivors and the injured in Wenchuan County, China's Xinhua news agency reported.

 

Roads blocked by rocks and mudslides had hampered the effort to reach the epicenter in Wenchuan County, forcing military doctors and soldiers to walk to reach the area almost 24 hours after the 7.9 magnitude earthquake shook central China, Xinhua said.

 

Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao ordered the military to make it a top priority to open the roads into Wenchuan County by mid-day Tuesday.

 

The Chinese government said the death toll was sure to rise as authorities began to reach some of the worst-hit areas. Thousands remained trapped under the rubble, including hundreds of children at a half-dozen schools.

 

"Blocked roads, disrupted communication and continuous rainfall have all created obstacles to our rescue efforts," Wen said, according to Xinhua. "People's lives and property safety are the top priorities and many people are still trapped in debris."

 

An expert told CNN the quake, which struck at 2:28 p.m. (2:28 a.m. ET) Monday, was the largest the region has seen "for over a generation."

 

CNN's John Vause saw block after block of devastation in the town of Jiang You, about 60 miles (100 km) from the epicenter, arriving there about a day after the quake hit.

 

"These people who live in the city are now hunkering down under tarpaulins and under tents," Vause said, as a steady drizzle added to the misery. "Many are afraid to go back indoors because their buildings are no longer safe."

 

Nearly all the confirmed deaths were in Sichuan Province. Authorities expected the toll to climb as rescuers reached the epicenter. Local radio quoted disaster relief officials as saying a third of the buildings in Wenchuan had collapsed and another third were seriously damaged.

 

The province is home 68 giant pandas at a pair of research bases. The State Forestry Administration said all had survived the quake, according to state-run media. The fate of the 130 pandas housed at the Wolong Giant Panda Protection and Research Center was unknown, Xinhua reported.

 

Chengdu Shuangliu International Airport reopened Tuesday after authorities inspected its runways for damage following the quake, Xinhua reported. The resumption of air service gives the province additional links for funneling supplies into the badly battered region.

 

China Eastern Airlines said it is ferrying in hundreds of rescue personnel and tons of cargo from eastern China, according to state-run media.

 

Joe Guo, a university student in Chengdu, told CNN the scene is chaotic as the military tries to rush aid into the surrounding rural areas.

 

"The traffic is not good because a lot of the roads were ... seriously damaged," Guo said on Tuesday. "The army people -- they were just running there to get the stuff in and the injured people out."

 

Some 2,000 tourists were stranded in the northwestern part of the province and a landslide buried a tourist coach in Sichuan's Maoxian County, killing 37, Xinhua reported.

 

Forty-eight tourists made their way out of the region on foot and arrived in Dujiangyan on Tuesday, state-run media said. Among the stranded tourists were 15 Britons.

 

The British tourists were likely in Wolong at the Panda center, according to Xinhua.

 

The state-run Zhongxin news agency reported that a survivor who escaped Beichuan County in Sichuan Province described the province as having been "razed to the ground." Rescuers were stranded about 10 kilometers (six miles) from the county, Xinhua reported.

 

The Red Cross Society of China, coordinating some international aid efforts, encouraged financial donations because of the difficulty of getting supplies to those most in need. Impact Your World

 

Mercy Corps, a U.S.-based humanitarian group, is channeling aid through a partner agency in China, the group's director told CNN.

 

"Everyone is incredibly nervous and shocked about everything that's happening," Kate Janis said, adding, "The first step is getting there and next step is (determining) what can we do?"

 

At least six schools collapsed in the quake or its aftershocks, Xinhua reported. At one school, almost 900 eighth graders and ninth graders were believed to be buried, a villager said. Video Watch rescue efforts at school hit by quake »

 

By Monday night, at least 50 bodies had been pulled from the rubble at Juyuan Middle School in Juyuan Township of Dujiangyan City, Sichuan Province, Xinhua reported.

 

"Some buried teenagers were struggling to free themselves from the ruins while others were calling for help. Eight excavators were working at the site. Devastated parents watched as five cranes worked at the site and an ambulance waited," Xinhua reported.

 

Some 600 people were confirmed dead and another 2,300 people were buried under two collapsed chemical plants in Sichuan's Shifang city, where 80 tons of ammonia leaked, Xinhua reported. The plants were among a series of buildings that collapsed, including private homes, schools and factories. Video Watch a report on the growing toll inflicted by the quake »

 

Much of the nation's transportation system was halted. Xinhua reported there were "multiple landslides and collapses along railway lines" near Chengdu.

 

Sichuan Province sits in the Sichuan basin and is bordered by the Himalayas to the west. The Yangtze River flows through the province and the Three Gorges Dam in nearby Hubei Province controls flooding to the Sichuan -- though there were no reports of damage to the world's largest dam.

 

The last major earthquake in the region occurred in the northwestern margin of the Sichuan basin when a 7.5-magnitude quake killed more than 9,300 people on August 25, 1933.

 

While many of the most immediate efforts were focused on Sichuan Province, Xinhua reported that there were dead and injured also in Gansu, Chongqing and Yunnan.

 

A 40-car freight train, carrying 13 tankers full of gasoline, derailed and caught fire Monday in Gansu province, officials said, according to state-run media, cutting the Baoji-Chengdu railway.

 

Other stories of destruction poured in from around the country. Xinhua said one person was killed in Santai County, in the city of Mianyang, when a water tower fell.

 

A provincial government spokesman said officials feared more dead and injured would be found in collapsed houses in Dujiangyan City in Wenchuan County.

 

Bonnie Thie, the country director for the Peace Corps, told CNN she was on a university campus in Chengdu, in the eastern part of China's Sichuan province about 60 miles from the epicenter, when the first quake hit.

 

"You could see the ground shaking," Thie told CNN.

 

The shaking "went on for what seemed like a very long time," she said.

 

Bruce Presgrave, a geophysicist with the U.S. Geological Survey, said the quake's effects were heightened because of its strength, proximity to major population centers and shallow depth. Shallow quakes tend to do more damage near the epicenter than do deeper ones, he said.

http://www.cnn.com/2008/WORLD/asiapcf/05/1...tion=cnn_latest

 

[Krys]

oy vey i was in Chongqing just last December

[dj4celine]

I have been catching on the news lately and whenever they show this, it just make me mroe scared... God, I hope there are no more casualities than the reported ones

 

And those poor pandas

[KimboCosmo]

Aww, how horrible...I just heard on my news here that they are totaling 18,000 deaths now...and they aren't done counting...

[Bellamy]

Over 50,000 dead, missing or buried in China quake

 

by Francois Bougon Wed May 14, 7:59 AM ET

 

DUJIANGYAN, China (AFP) - More than 50,000 people are dead, missing or buried under rubble after China's devastating earthquake, officials said Wednesday as the full horror of the disaster began to emerge.

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Rescue teams who punched into the quake's stricken epicentre reported whole towns all but wiped off the map, spurring frantic efforts to bring emergency relief to the survivors.

 

Planes and military helicopters air-dropped supplies, 100 troops parachuted into a county that had been cut off, and rescuers in cities and towns across Sichuan province fought to pull the living and the dead from the debris.

 

But the overwhelming message that came back from this southwestern province was that only now is a picture slowly beginning to form of the epic scale of Monday's 7.9-magnitude quake.

 

State media quoted Sichuan vice governor Li Chengyun saying that based on "incomplete" figures, 14,463 people were confirmed dead in the province as of mid-afternoon Wednesday.

 

Nearly 26,000 were buried in rubble and nearly 15,000 missing, he added.

 

But far beyond the numbers is the human tragedy behind China's worst quake in a generation as rescue teams claw through twisted metal and concrete.

 

They were looking for people like He Xinghao, 15, whose lifeless body was eventually pulled from the debris of a school close to the epicentre.

 

Like many other Chinese of his age, strict population policies had made him an only child, and he was showered with affection by his family.

 

"He was such a good and well-behaved boy. He always did his homework," said his aunt, Ge Mi, as fresh tears flowed from her reddened eyes.

 

It was a scene repeated across Sichuan -- a province often better known to foreigners for its endangered giant pandas.

 

The destruction around the epicentre in remote Wenchuan county is massive, with whole mountainsides sheared off, highways ripped apart and building after building levelled.

 

Cries for help were heard from a flattened school in Yingxiu, where people tried to dig out survivors with their bare hands, state media said.

 

"The losses have been severe," Wang Yi, who heads an armed police unit sent into the epicentre zone, was quoted as saying by Sichuan Online news site.

 

"Some towns basically have no houses left. They have all been razed to the ground."

 

At least 7,700 people died in Yingxiu alone, Xinhua quoted a local official as saying, with only 2,300 surviving.

 

Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao said 100,000 military personnel and police had been mobilised.

 

"Time is life," he urged rescuers.

 

The air drop started with planes and helicopters flying dozens of sorties, dropping tonnes of food and relief aid into the worst-hit zone, most of it cut off from the outside world by landslides and road closures.

 

As well as Yingxiu, CCTV television said air drops were also made in nearby Mianyang, Mianzhu and Pengzhou, while helicopters flew to Wenchuan with food, drinks , tents, communications equipment and other supplies.

 

The rescue effort has been badly disrupted since Monday by heavy rain , and the Meteorological Authority forecast more later in the week, raising the risk of fresh landslides.

 

Many thousands of people are homeless, living and sleeping under makeshift plastic shacks propped up by wood and bamboo, and amid the grieving there was also some frustration at the overwhelmed relief effort.

 

World powers including the United States, European Union and United Nations have offered money and expertise, and Pope Benedict XVI called for prayers to be said.

 

However China rebuffed offers to deploy foreign search and rescue experts, saying conditions were "not yet ripe."

 

A Japanese foreign ministry official in charge of emergency aid said Tokyo offered rescue teams with sniffer dogs, but China had made no request.

 

Australian and South Korean expertise was also politely declined, although China did accept one million dollars in aid from Seoul.

 

"We were told that China cannot receive rescuers now due to poor condition of transportation systems," a Japanese foreign ministry official said.

 

Wednesday's leg of the Olympic torch relay in eastern Jianxi province began with a minute's silence before the runners set off.

 

Organisers of the Beijing Olympics are scaling down the relay as the torch makes it way to the capital for the Games in August, in a further blow to its troubled round-the-world journey after earlier protests over Tibet.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20080514/wl_af...ke_080514115914

 

[dj4celine]

I cannot switch on any of the news channels... it's just too

 

First the cyclone in Myanmar, then the earthquake in China and last night serial bomb blasts in Jaipur... I have so many friends there and my best friend's family are there

 

Ugh

[KimboCosmo]

I cannot even begin to imagine...they said on the news that there were whole entire schools swallowed and cannot be found with all kids and teens in them...

[dj4celine]

I know One reporter said that over a 1000 kids were buried under a middle school.... and when they were reporting that, they rescued one child from underneath and I was like A SURVIVOR but after that they took out a corpse and I was again

[jackydion]

beijing people can feel it

shanghai people can feel it

guangzhou people can feel it

 

over 1/2 of china can feel it

 

oh god.........

 

god bless everyone.........