Aftershock in China Topples Many Buildings: NY Times

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/26/world/asia/26quake.html

Aftershock in China Topples Many Buildings

Frederic J. Brown/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

Earthquake survivors searched through rubble in Hanwang, in southwest Sichuan Province, on Sunday.

Published: May 26, 2008

BEIJING, China — A powerful aftershock hit a poor, mountainous region of Sichuan Province on Sunday afternoon, toppling thousands of buildings and injuring hundreds, as China struggled to find shelter for millions of earthquake refugees.

The tremor in Qingchuan County, measured by the United States Geological Survey measured as having a magnitude of 5.8, hit at 4:21 p.m. local time. By Sunday evening, the official Xinhua news agency had reported one death and 260 injuries. A government spokesman in Qingchuan said emergency medical teams were responding to calls for help from six townships, Xinhua reported, and the total number of casualties is not yet known.

Another official in Guangyuan County, east of Qingchuan, told Xinhua that the aftershock had caused 71,300 homes to collapse, though it is unclear how such a precise count was made in a matter of hours. The tremor struck in a rough and remote area of northern Sichuan, on the border of Gansu Province, and it damaged roads, toppled old buildings, and caused several fires in one town, Xinhua reported.

The aftershock came as the Chinese government intensified its efforts to find shelter for earthquake survivors, pledging to build 1.5 million temporary houses. Also on Sunday, state television reported that rescuers had saved an 80-year-old man who had lived for nearly two weeks in a collapsed building.

The rescue, made on Friday, was trumpeted in the state-run media, but Chinese officials are clearly shifting the relief effort toward finding shelter for millions of refugees. The government has said the earthquake left 5 million people homeless, although one official in Sichuan Province said the number could be as high as 11 million, according to a report on Sunday from the official Xinhua news agency.

The death toll rose on Sunday, past 62,000, and while rescue efforts are continuing, the chances of finding more trapped survivors is dwindling with every day.

Meanwhile, a senior official in Beijing warned that 69 dams in the earthquake region could present "dangerous situations" and risked some danger of collapsing. To reduce risks, officials have already drained numerous reservoirs in the region to ease pressure on the dams.

Relief efforts continued in Sichuan Province on a day that jangled nerves in the provincial capital of Chengdu as the late afternoon aftershock sent thousands of residents running into the streets.

The aftershock comes a day after China's premier, Wen Jiabao, held an impromptu news conference at a tent camp in Yingxiu, at the earthquake's epicenter, and said that the government's efforts were shifting from rescuing people buried under fallen buildings to caring for the homeless.

Mr. Wen, speaking through a megaphone, said that tents had been transported to disaster areas from other provinces, but that there was a severe shortage of them, according to official news reports.

In a sign that manufacturing shelters for the homeless is among the Communist Party's top priorities, China's president, Hu Jintao, on Sunday visited a factory in northern Hebei Province that makes prefabricated houses. Last week, Mr. Hu visited a plant in southern China that manufactures tents. The government has ordered manufacturers nationwide to produce and deliver 30,000 tents to earthquake hit areas every day.

In the city of Dujiangyan, thousands of people are now sleeping in blue disaster tents set up in rows the open-air track of a college campus. A local restaurant chain serves hot meals every day. Doctors with the Chinese Red Cross prepare stews of medicinal herbs for the ailing. Last week, volunteers from a hair salon gave refugees free hair cuts.

Zhou Dezheng, 58, a retired architect, has been staying in a government-issued disaster relief tent with his family and two others. "We are better off than refugees in most countries," he said in an interview last week. "We have tents. We have food."

Many buildings in Dujiangyan, like Mr. Zhou's home, cracked but did not collapse. Virtually every apartment building in the city of 100,000 is now empty. Sitting beside his tent in the yellow glow of a flashlight last week, Mr. Zhou said, "I am afraid to go home."

The residents of Dujiangyan, a city that is only an hour's drive from the provincial capital, Chengdu, the headquarters of the relief effort, are relatively fortunate. They have food, water and shelter.

But in hundreds of villages in the surrounding countryside, many families have not received sturdy steel-framed tents. Instead, they must make do with makeshift shelters made from bamboo poles and tarpaulins. Late last week, several farmers who hiked out of the mountainous Hongkou Township, west of Dujiangyan, said there was not enough food and drinking water there.

By Saturday, 448,140 tents had been sent to disaster areas, according to Xinhua, although as many as three million may be needed. Building material to construct more than 35,000 temporary houses had also been shipped to Sichuan, Xinhua reported. The white structures, common as dormitories for construction workers, could be seen lining a boulevard in Dujiangyan.

On Saturday, in his second visit to the disaster hit areas since the earthquake struck on March 12, Mr. Wen, the Chinese premier, said the government was on alert for secondary disasters, in particular floods that could be caused by the breaching of lakes formed when rivers were blocked by landslides.

On Sunday, state media reported that 1,600 soldiers were marched to one of the "quake lakes," in Tangjiashan, with orders to blast away the landslide behind which water has been rising for days. Helicopters have not been able to land troops in the region because of bad weather.

The water level in the Tangjiashan quake lake, two miles upstream from devastated Beichuan County, rose by about 6 feet on Saturday, and if its barrier were breached, a flash flood could threaten the lives of 70,000 people downstream, state media reported.

Comment: We the people of Aztlan express our empathy and offer up prayers for the fine people of China as we wish them safety and relief. ~Peta

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