[ElectricGypsy]

China: Quake kills 3,000-5,000 in one county - China - MSNBC.com

BREAKING NEWS
MSNBC News Services
updated 13 minutes ago

BEIJING, China - Chinese state media said Monday that 3,000 to 5,000 people have died in one county in Sichuan province alone from a massive earthquake.
The official Xinhua News Agency said another 10,000 people were believed hurt in Beichuan county after the 7.8-magnitude quake.
Nearly 900 students were trapped after their school collapsed about 60 miles from the epicenter. Photos showed heavy cranes trying to remove rubble from the ruined school.
At least five more schools in the province reportedly collapsed, burying unknown numbers of elementary and middle school children.
The earthquake struck in the middle of the afternoon when classes and office towers were full.
The temblor was felt as far away as Pakistan, Vietnam and Thailand.

Xinhua reporters in Juyuan township, about 60 miles from the epicenter, saw buried teenagers struggling to break loose from underneath the rubble of their three-story school building "while others were crying out for help."
Two girls were quoted by Xinhua as saying they escaped because they had "run faster than others."

Communication networks disrupted
The quake struck about 60 miles northwest of Chengdu at 2:28 p.m., the U.S. Geological Survey said on its Web site. Calls into the city did not go through as panicked residents quickly overloaded the telephone system.
"In Chengdu, mobile telecommunication converters 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.

'Never felt anything like this'
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.
Injuries were also reported in Aba prefecture of Sichuan province, where the local government said the quake cracked and collapsed buildings and damaged mountain roads.
The U.S. Geological Survey said the quake was centered about 6 miles below the surface, and that there were several smaller aftershocks.
In Beijing, people ran screaming into the streets in other cities, where many residents said they had never been in an earthquake. 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.
Closer to the epicenter in Chongqing, Lai Dequn was napping while her mother watched TV on the 19th floor of a hotel. "I suddenly felt the bed shaking and then realized it must be an earthquake," said the 42-year-old Lai. "So I just put on slippers and helped my mother down to the ground floor."
In Shanghai, skyscrapers swayed and most office occupants went rushing into the streets. The airport in the provincial capital, Chengdu, was closed and roads were clogged with traffic after the earthquake, state television reported.
Rain was also predicted for the disaster area.

Prime Minister headed to epicenter
Chinese President Hu Jintao ordered that the injured be quickly treated, Xinhua reported. Premier Wen Jiabao was headed to the epicenter and troops with China's People's Liberation Army were being dispatched to help with disaster relief.
In Beijing, thousands of people evacuated or were ordered out of buildings.
"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."
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.

Hanoi, Bangkok feel quake
The U.S. Geological Survey described it as "a dangerous earthquake" given its proximity to densely populated areas.
"I would say the best characterization at this point is that it's a dangerous earthquake," said Bruce Presgrave, a geophysicist at the USGS in Colorado. "The entire area is a densely populated part of China. There are lots of people exposed to potentially damaging ground shaking."
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.
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.

[tinkerbell11599]

bouncing over from Korean board...

this number has been updated to over 8300 people. 80% of buildings in one county have collapsed.

see Death toll in China earthquake rises to 8,533 - Yahoo! News for more details.

Jen

[specialk4b]

How dreadful! Major devastation.

[spitzlvr]

It is tragic. I have some friends over there. I emailed to see if they were OK. One of the office girls ran home, to find her grandfather dead, and the house totally destroyed. It is terrible.

[Trace7]

I am so very saddenned by this.

[KarenInCa]

HTS is reporting that none of the orphanages sponsored by HTS had children that were injured. I'm praying that any child feeling scared right now in China is comforted.

[dannysgirl]

Every morning I wake up and think, what else can go wrong in China before we travel and get our baby. I am so very saddened to read about the level of devastation this has brought to China.

I have a niece who lives in China and she is safe, she hasn't heard anything more than those of us in the US know because this kind of stuff does not get news coverage in China.

My heart goes out to everyone in this tragedy.

[amyfk]

I awoke to reading CNN.COM this morning and read the bad news. So saddening to hear! Such loss of life!
Amy K, NJ

[ttcasey]

Devastating, so many lives are lost. We are praying for all those families who lost loved ones. I pray even more for those children who are living in orphanages. We don't hear about how any of these children are doing.

[jessibird]

My agency reported that everyone traveling from our agency is safe. The number is up to 12-15,000! Just so terrible and sad. They are all in our prayers.

[SofiasMom]

here's some very good reporting from a reporter in Chengdu:

NPR: Chengdu Diary

Meeting Survivors on the Road

The first person I spoke to was 14-year-old Zheng Mingzhong, who was balancing himself with a bamboo pole as he stood on one foot, his other foot swollen and blistered. When we approached him, he immediately broke into tears.

He was at home when the earthquake hit yesterday, when bricks came tumbling down. His father was away -- at work at a coal mine in the mountains, and his two older brothers were away too, doing work in cities, the oldest one in Shanghai. He has not had contact with them.

His mother died before he was four years old. He went to his grandmother's, and together, the two of them walked 3 or 4 hours, he thinks, to a town where he spent the night. Then this morning, he got on a motorcycle to Ganxi, where he hoped to find medical help. He did, from a local village doctor, who diagnosed him with a fracture.

We also spoke to 36-year-old Zhao Rong, who had walked 30 kilometers with four children -- two of them hers, two others the children of a relative and a friend. She comes from the town of Chen Jiaba in Beichuan County, where she said everything was toppled. She believes that as many as one third of the 15,000 residents in her town may have perished. She said they had moved into the town so that their children could have a better education, and now, they've lost everything. She told us, we don't know where we're going, we'll just try to find a place to stop ... at this point, we're just trying to survive.


also here's a list from Time Magazine on where to donate:

The China Blog - TIME

[KarenInCa]

Here is the latest update from HTS

"As of now, Wednesday afternoon in China, there are 12,012 people dead and 7,841 missing in Sichuan alone, and the numbers continue to rise. 26,206 people are living in temporary shelters. Only 30 children of 900 have been rescued from the collapsed high school in Dujiangyan, Sichuan. At least 20 children were buried in the collapse of a primary school in
Liangping, Chongqing."

I can't even put into words, my feelings for the children going thru this.

[hoping44]

I had some extra time today at school to look at several reports and photographs on the situation in China. It was all that I could do to keep from completely breaking down right there. Then, at Church tonight, one of our elders led a special prayer for those who have special needs right now and he included the people of China. I had to really fight hard not to lose all composure. Their suffering is just so great, and my heart breaks for the parents who have lost children and especially for the children that are left without parents. They are in our prayers, which is the best help we can offer, and DH and I will give to the fund that HTS has set up. But, there is a part of me that wants so badly to be there, hands on, helping...

Our little guy is in Wuhan, so I feel fairly sure that he's fine. I just want him home and away from snowstorms, viruses, and earthquakes!!!

[KarenInCa]

Tracy, it must be so difficult knowing that your boy is in a place that you cannot protect him. That was the most difficult part of getting our referral, and nothing major happened at the time.
I was watching CCTV tonight (an English station broadcast mostly from China) And a speaker on one of the shows mentioned about all the displaced people now, young and old, that were affected by the earthquake. I knew there was a lot of loss, but what I had not considered was (as the speaker mentioned) there are now a lot of orphaned older children that just a few days ago had a family, and elderly that lived with their adult children that are now going to need care. I couldn't even imagine what it must be like to lose everything and everyone you have, and have no safety net when you fall.