Sichuan is one of the heavy-populated provinces in China, total population is close to 90 million. I believe it was the biggest province, until the 30 million mega city Chongqing spin-off. Someone please correct me if I am wrong. Sichuan is the home of Panda bears, and it's quite famous for beautiful landscape. Its super spicy cuisine is quite popular in China as well. Hopefully the death toll won't grow rapidly and all the best for the people. Rescue response seems to be quite fast this time, hopefully they can save a lot more.
http://news.wenxuecity.com/messages/200805/news-gb2312-593911.html here. some pictures. give you an idea what the landscape looks like there. also the brick buildings. also destruction.
Thankfully Chengdu was not the epicenter, since earthquakes are the most dangerous natural disaster in the world I really hope the number of fatalities don't rise anymore. Hope the government reached the more mountainous regions directly hit swiftly, since the earthquake could have caused major landslides.
The latest reports I heard are that the Three Gorges Dam is OK but they are keeping an eye on it. I wonder if they will open some of the flood gates to reduce the water level incase something does happen. One thing I'm wondering is with all of the construction going on in Chengdu if a lot of that heavy machinery can be diverted to rescue efforts. Also does anyone know if any of the expert rescue teams from California, Japan and Israel are on the way?
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From what I heard unfortunately the roads to the most heavily damaged areas were blocked by the earthquake and heavy rain. It would be really hard to get those heavy machinery in there. Until the road is cleared, it is quite possible the major rescue effort would be done by very basic tools. I just hope that the PLA can arrive as early as possible and save as many as possible. About 30k of PLA were on their way by foot, and hopefully could get there by tomorrow morning. The death toll right now is over 9,000. And at the epic center there are still three counties with about 24k population that haven't reestablished communication with the outside world yet... Terrible terrible tragedy.
Thanks for the images and to others for the updates -- it is hard to get a good mental picture of the tragedy without such input. Let's hope and pray the weather will cooperate for what is going to be a massive rescue/ aid effort in the coming days and weeks.
http://news.wenxuecity.com/messages/200805/news-gb2312-594229.html there are more. look at the bottom. the last 3 pictures shows the rescue. i also read something about some land developer bought land where the local seismic center was a couple of years back. it's against the law to do that. i think somebody is going to be in trouble if that's true.
more pictures. http://news.wenxuecity.com/messages/200805/news-gb2312-594538.html closer to the center.
The US 10th Mountain Brigade has signifigant airlift capacity into mountains. I know that a lot of them are in Afghanistan right now and if the roads remain impassible for awhile I wonder if they could divert some of their heavy transport copters to Sichuan.
it's kind of too late for that. the soldiers got there on foot already. the local government was functioning too. we'll see by tomorrow how things goes.
I was in Beijing when it took place yesterday. my building was shaking and made everyone dizzy. I walked 30 floors down to the ground and there were thousands of us in the open area. then I learned something happened 1000 miles away...
I hope things go well and they aren't as bad as I fear they might. That said I think things might get worse before they get better as time is always critical in a disaster and if the only access is by foot even if 30K soldiers can get there they still need to get supplies and evacuate wounded and the longer that takes the more people will suffer.
my cousin told me that they had to get out of their building in shanghai. she walked out from 55th floor.
