Death toll 8,500 so far. [rquoter]China says massive quake has killed thousands 7.8 temblor topples schools, factories, hospital in Sichuan province MSNBC News Services updated 1 hour, 7 minutes ago CHONGQING, China - A massive earthquake struck central China on Monday, killing more than 8,500 people and trapping nearly 900 students under the rubble of their school, state media reported. The 7.8-magnitude earthquake was among the worst to strike China in decades, devastating a hilly region of small cities and towns in Sichuan and nearby provinces. The official Xinhua News Agency said 8,533 people died in Sichuan and dozens of other deaths were reported elsewhere. Xinhua said 80 percent of the buildings had collapsed in Beichuan county in Sichuan province after the quake, raising fears the overall death toll could increase sharply. A chemical plant collapsed in Shifang city, to the northeast of the quake’s epicenter, burying hundreds of people and sending more than 80 tons of toxic liquid ammonia leaking from the site, state media reported. 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. 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. Middle of the school day Monday’s quake hit 60 miles northwest of Chengdu in the middle of the school day, toppling at least eight schools, leaving hundreds of students and teachers trapped, state media said. 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 Aug. 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. ‘Crying out for help’ 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. Premier Wen Jiabao arrived in Chengdu and President Hu Jintao ordered an “all-out” rescue effort, Xinhua reported. FirstPerson: Help us report the story Do you have videos, photos or reports from the scene? FirstPerson: Readers share their experiences from China Olympic venues survive unscathed 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. 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. 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. Major event 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.[/rquoter]
I assume we have members from the Sichuan area... all best thoughts to you folks. The death toll is astounding, and to think of all the trapped people...
Unbelievable. Just to put things into perspective on 9-11 we lost around 3,000. They're saying roughly 9,000 are reportedly dead after the first day alone with many more trapped, injured, dead or unaccounted for. Something like 900 children are trapped beneath the ruins of their school. This is just....there are no words.
i'm pretty sure there are. china is crowed pretty much everywhere. so slightest natural disaster will have a big effect. we gotta call family back home after work. my home town is by three gorges dam, which is about 200 miles from the center, i think. i think they should be ok though. the house construction in most part of china, including rural areas are mostly concrete. a lot farmers build concrete houses on their own or cheap labor. so destruction is pretty deadly. people need to start building houses with earthquake prevention in mind. edit: i'm going to china in june, so i will probably see some effect from the earthquake. going to help out when i can.
Best wishes to you and your family. I suppose this was a big worry for the original three gorges proposal, but it looks to have performed well, from what i can read so far. If the dam has trouble, that would be truly catastrophic.
this is probably one of the more serious natural disaster China is facing in the last decade or so. from what information I collected... the epic center of the quake is about 100 KM west of Chengdu, one of the central cities in central/western China. Fortunately, the areas around the epic center are not heavily populated by chinese standards (I think there's 5 cities each with about 100k populations lying close to the epic center and are most seriously hit). The second factor went in our favor is that the quake happened at 2 pm local time (unlike the midnight quake in Tangshan in 1976, which killed 240,000+), so a portion of the people had time to escape. the Unfortunate part, however, would consists some quite troulbing list: 1. the quake happened in a montainous area. The highway/local roads in the area are known to be dangerous and easily bloked by mud slides. -- and as a result, the road from the outside is blocked at the moment, it would take a miracle for the PLA to clear through all the obstacle and move enough heavy machinaries into the area in time. -- I'm still holding out hopes, as PLA has done quite some miracles in terms of reacting quickly to natural disasters and deliver in recent history. I, myself, was a beneficiary of their heroics back in a 1994 flooding before I moved to Canada. The reports are PLA helicopters has moved into the montains despite it's midnight local time and it's raining. -- from what I heard from friends knowing more about the situations, the pilots are risking their own lives atm. soldiers are marching on foot towards the most hit cities to provide the first wave of relief efforts. The heavy machineries, however, are blocked about 50 KMs away from where most needed and it could take days to clear the roads for them to move in. I've asked about whether it's possible to bring the machinary in via helicopter. unfortunately, ppl more knowledgeable about PLAAF believes that we lack the kind of heavy copters for this kind of job, and the only countries who are capable of performing such efforts are Russia and US. I somehow hope there would be a diplomatic miracle enabling China to borrow some of the you guys copters for the reliefing effort, although in my heart I know that even if it is possible, it's probably going to be too late... (details to be continued)
Thanks for the update. I have couple friends goes to school in Chengdu. I have been calling them all afternoon, and I know for sure one of them is okey, but haven't got a hold of the other one yet
second troubling factor, is that there's a major river running through the cities that's most seriously hit. coupled with the fact that weather forecastes say there's going to be considerable rain in the area in the next couple of days, it's going to be BAD for the survivers. especially for their sanitary conditions. and looking at history, there's a very bad and scary comparison... in 1933, a 7.0 earthquake hit the same area. the earth movement was so drastic, a city of more than 10,000 people dropped 500 meters vertically in a matter of minutes. there was no survivors reported in that disaster 75 years ago. at the beginning, as the epic center lost all contacts to the outside world, there was fear that such tragedies might happen again. fortunately, as the first helicopters reporting back, the city still exists and local authorities are still functioning and directing reliefing efforts. However, the death toll are NOT going to be light.
the last thing I'm worried about yet most media has not paid attention to yet, is the fact that 15 minutes after the first shock, a 6 magnitude after shock followed. What that means is... assume I'm a normal young man who escaped the first quake and are not well trained in dealing with this kind of disaster, I probably will be totally shocked for quite some time. then, after the initial shock, I probably will realize that this is a huge disaster and needs everyone to help everyone. I run back to the ruins and starts to at least try to help ppl that are still trapped. -- and now, that's exactly when the 6 magnitude after shock hits. I'm really afraid that IF the first after shock hurted any one, it probably hurted the ones with most heroics and the ones awaken from the disaster the quickest. -- and those are exactly the people we need most in the next couple of days, especially with heavy machinary not available. I know I can't do anything at the moment, but it's just so hard to stand here and do nothing... *deep sigh*
I've passed through a few times, one thing that i recall is that htere aren't many super tall buildings in chengdu, which may prove fortunate.
