Quake razed some Chinese cities ‘to the ground’
Updated May 14, 2008 17:53:44
Rescue workers who made it to Wenchuan County, the epicentre of this week’s devastating earthquake in China, say some towns have been “razed to the ground”, with not a single house left standing.
Several thousand army troops and medical workers arrived in the area late on Tuesday, after having to walk to the area, after damaged roads and bad weather made it impossible to drive or fly in.
According to the Chinese airforce, troops are now parachuting into areas where bad weather has until now made it impossible to reach.
“The losses have been severe. Some towns basically have no houses left. They have all been razed to the ground,” Wang Yi, head of an armed police unit sent into the disaster zone, was quoted as saying by Sichuan Online news site.
He did not say how many of Wenchuan’s eight main towns had suffered such a high level of damage in Monday’s 7.9 magnitude earthquake, but said they included the towns of Yingxiu, Xuankou, and Wolong.
“Mountain villages in the surrounding area have also been basically razed to the ground,” he added.
The ABC’s China correspondent Stephen McDonell has travelled to the region and says rescue workers have a hard task ahead of them.
“We’re hearing people calling out for help in large hills of rubble and they didn’t have the equipment needed to clear those hills of rubble, so it might be pretty tough for them,” he said.
“I can’t imagine just by using your bare hands, for example where I’m standing now there’s just rubble all around me, you could never move it if you wanted to, using your hands.
“You’d need heavy lifting equipment.”
Officially more than 12,000 people have been killed in the quake, but tens of thousands of people are understood to be buried in the rubble of their homes, schools and workplaces in the quake zone.
According to some reports, in the city of Mianyang there are nearly 20,000 people buried, while elsewhere in Beichuan County, photos showed only around a fifth of buildings were still standing.
http://www.radioaustralia.net.au/news/stories/200805/s2244803.htm?tab=latest
There are American’s trapped in Wolong. They do have cell phone usage now. One of them called into CCTV a little while ago.
China may have new threat from damaged N-facilities (Nuclear)
New Delih: The aftermath of China’s devastating earthquake on Tuesday saw makeshift refugee camps mushrooming in odd places, with Mianyang being one of them.
The industrial city plays home to China’s nuclear weapons industry and turned into a refugee camp as tens of thousands of residents camped on streets for the second night in a row. Thousands more stayed in the city’s stadium.
The city’s buildings were dark and deserted as the government posted guards to keep the people out, for fear of aftershocks. Powerful aftershocks, one to the tune of magnitude 6, was felt in Sichuan’s Chengdu, one of the cities worst hit by the 7.8 magnitude earthquake.
However, the refugees may not be safe even now, for the earthquake may have damaged the nuclear facilities in Mianyang.
French experts of the Institute for Radiological Protection and Nuclear Safety (IRSN) told agencies on Tuesday that they could not rule out damage to the nuclear facilities in Daya Bay, Lingao, Qinshan and Tianwan, as a result of the earthquakes.
Though all nuclear reactors are located more than thousand kilmetres from the epicentre, other nuclear facilities - such as research reactors - are located in Sichuan, some even within 100 km of the epicentre.
“Given the sharp ground acceleration of 250 centimetres per second detected 70 kilometres from the epicentre, it is not possible at this stage to rule out damage to these facilities,” the institute said in a statement to agencies.
Mianyang’s surrounding areas have a reported death toll of 7,300 while 18,000 are still believe to be trapped under rubble.
More than 12,000 deaths have been reported in the Sichuan province alone.
http://www.ibnlive.com/news/china-may-have-new-threat-from-damaged-nfacilities/65247-2.html
Ghastly....
Rescue workers who made it to Wenchuan County, the epicentre of this week’s devastating earthquake in China, say some towns have been “razed to the ground”, with not a single house left standing.
What were these houses made of? How were they built? Just curious...
prayers for all those who were affected.