a last update, the death toll of over 8,000 DOES NOT include three of the cities most seriously hit. Contacts to those cities are just being established/expected to be reestablished after the copters move in , and death toll counts are probably not the highest priority right now. Expect the casually to seriously increase still after tomorrow, when the information in those cities starts to come in... personally, I'm hoping for it to stay under 30,000. god bless China.
Isn't China mostly Buddhists? Man it sucks for both China and Myanmar. So you have two history book disasters that take out at least 50,000 people in the same month! Damn. As for China, I wonder how this would effect the Olympics? I mean, you can't really enjoy it if you got relatives who died from an earthquake just a few months ago.
Chengdu is doing fine. The small cities to the west and nw are taking the most severe hits. Bless to all of them, especially those kids at school.
China is mostly Confucian/Daoist mix, with a little bit Buddhist twist. i think by "god", he meant "heaven". of course, he could be a christian. you never know. weather it's heaven or god, the idea is the same. pray for the victims.
continued reports back from online sources: the city of Beichuan (where an estimated 3000-5000 dead) has practially no houses standing at the moment. PLA is still marching on foot towards the epic center. In the first 4 hours, they have moved in 30 KMs. another 70KM mountainous path left if they want to reach the cities that's most seriously hit. in the city of WenChuan (the city closest to the epic center), about 30,000 people are staying at temporary sanctuaries. this leaves another 80,000 unaccounted for. a large portion likely trapped inside collapsed buildings. The most optimistic prediction is PLA will be able to reach there around 10 am (10 pm EST) local time, 19 hours after the quake. The troops will likely be exhausted even if that's the case, but let's hope they'll still be able to do something once they are there... most copters have been forced to turn back as the whether condition continues to be unforgiving. it looks like we'll have to wait for tomorrow to try send in help through air again.
well... personally I'm atheist (sp?). but right now... I don't really care which god to pray for as long as they can help. I hope i'm not offending by saying this. I'm just quite desperate now.
Upped the initial 7.8 to 7.9 btw.. I heard authorities hadn't even reached the city at the center of the quake, which they believe will have been hit worst.. so they don't know who is/isn't alive in there. And I read the dam is fine, thankfully.
seems I'm bombarding this thread now. Hope that's not gonna make anyone uncomfortable. I guess I'm just feeling I need to do something, even if it's posting what I know to help anyone interested understand the disaster... well, the updates: despite extremely heavy rain, several copters has managed to arrive their targets. I'm not sure how much help they can bring, but it must be at least a morale booster for ppl trapped in the ruined cities and should help direct further relief efforts tomorrow. the death toll of Beichuan (where is originally estimated to be 3000-5000) have raised to 7000+. This is included in the 8,500 figure in the first post, so the official total casualty is staying the same for now. However, this also means the several cities more severely hit is likely to match this number in the next couple of days, when the casualty counts are in. lastly, with heavy rains continue to pour through the region, mud slides are reported. number of slides and severities are unknown.
ya, i lived close to that area. it's pretty much mountains everywhere. the roads are all built by cutting on the side of the mountains. i doubt they are still useable. they need more copters.
copters will be hard find I'm afraid. Chengdu area are probably the safer part of China if we are talking about possible foreign invasion/wars. I suspect the majority of PLA's helicopter are concentrated in Nanjing Army District, where the atmosphere is more intense, due to the Taiwan issue. copters moving bases to join in the effort will take time. let's just hold our breath and see how they play out...
Geez...prayers go out to that country. And the kids...man...I just....wow. I am just starting to think that the world is headed the wrong way when it comes to pretty much everything. And if you are of the Christian Faith...well, last few years you got those signs you have been looking for the last 2,000 years or so....not to say I think they are signs. But ****, Katrina, typhoons, cyclones, earthquakes...don't know.
i was just looking and i saw this area of the world has some of the worst earthquakes in human history. you can only hope that the loss of life will be minimal but with the rains that are forecasted it makes a horrible situation even worse.
Not to minimize what the world has gone through the past few years.... but add up Katrina, Sept 11, Indian Ocean tsunami, etc. They don't even approach the 1918 Spanish flu outbreak which had death tolls of 50-100 million dead. If you picked up the paper in 1918 and read 100 million dead, wouldn't that would seem like the end of the world?
I'm sure people living in Europe at the time of the Black Death thought that was the end of the world already. For China, this earthquake is actually small compared to those Yellow River floods they suffered.
Thank you for posting the updates. It helps to "humanize" the disaster for those of us so far away. I think when you see X,000 dead in the headlines, it is so hard to comprehend the enormity of the pain being felt. My prayers go out for all involved.
This is incredibly devastating along with the cyclone. This definitely makes all of my problems trivial compared to the loss of life and homes over there. Hope the death toll won't be higher than expected.
A tragic event, glad to see the swift actions and the size of manpower put in place by the Chinese government. From what I have read one of the smaller cities had 80% of its building destroyed. One can only imagine the number of casualties this would have caused if the epicenter would have been in one of the more densely populated cities (by chinese standards). Does anyone know if any damage was done to the three gorge dam? Since I heard many reports regards to the concerns of earthquakes damaging the dam. I kind of wish cable news can show more coverage on it, I been watching it for a while but all thats on right now and all they have is Hillary Obama stuff and the same tornado report they been showing since last week.
What a terrible tragedy. However, trying to find a silver lining, I am very proud of the openness that the Chinese government is showing in their relief efforts. When I first heard about the earthquake, I feared that the response would be similar to Burma's, which would only lead to more casualties. Thankfully they proved me wrong. Very well said. This is my hope as well.
the government is usually very fast in these situations. the army gets moving very fast. the more help we can get, the better.
