Take a second to imagine,
if one day your life completely changes.
You'll never hear from your mother or father again.
Your husband will never come home from work.
You will never again feel your loving wife's embrace.
Your dearest child will never come home from school.
Your streets are masked with the remains of the buildings that once stood tall around you.
Your home is destroyed.
You have no shelter to protect you.
You have no where to go.
Everyone around you is crying.
Everything you loved is gone.
How would you be feeling?
On the afternoon of May 12, 2008, a catastrophic event had scarred the lives of the people of China forever. A vast earthquake at a magnitude 8.0 Ms/ 7.9 Mw. had hit the Sichuan province, a mountainous region in Western China. It was so notably tremendous, it was felt in nearby countries. The very next day, the death toll stood at 12,000, and 18,000 still unfound. Over 15 million lives were affected, and almost 4 million in the city of Chengdu. About 2,000 of the dead were students and teachers that were just in school during the unsuspected earthquake.
 "Will I go to work now?" |
 "Where will I go to school?" |
 "Where will I live?" |
Rescue teams and officials have yet to reach some of the main affected areas that are closest to the epicenter, due to roadways that were completely damaged or blocked off by landslides. In accordance to the Emergency Office of the State Council of China, the earthquake had caused 32,476 known deaths and 220,109 injured. However, this figure may increase as following reports come in.The chief secretary of Wenchuan county said in a short satellite phone call that there were some 30,000 people gathered at the major town waiting for help. One rescue team reported only 2,300 survivors from Yingxiu, out of a total population of about 9,000. 3,000 to 5,000 people were killed in Beichuan county, Sichuan province alone, 10,000 injured and 80% of the buildings were destroyed. 8 schools were ruined in Dujiangyan.
Experts points out that the earthquake has hit an area that has been largely neglected and untouched by China's spectacular economic rise. Health care is poor in inland areas like Sichuan province, where the magnitude-7.9 quake struck, highlighting the yawning gap between prosperous urban dwellers and struggling rural people. The Vice Minister of Health Gao Qiang told reporters in Beijing on Thursday that the "public health care system in China is insufficient." The Vice Minister of Health also suggested that the government would pick up the costs of care to earthquake victims, many of whom have little or no insurance: "The government should be responsible for providing medical treatment to them," he said.
Catastrophe modeling firm AIR Worldwide reported official estimates of insurers' losses at US$1 billion from the earthquake; estimated total damages exceed US$20 billion. It values Chengdu, Sichuan Province’s capital city of 4.5 million people, at around US$115 billion, with only a small portion covered by insurance.
Reginald DesRoches, a professor of civil and environmental engineering at Georgia Tech, pointed out that the massive damage of properties and houses in the earthquake area was because China did not get an adequate seismic design code until following the big Tangshan earthquake in 1976. DesRoches said: "If the buildings were older and built prior to that [1976 earthquake], chances are they weren't built for adequate earthquake forces."
News report indicate that the poorer, rural villages were hardest hit. Swaminathan Krishnan, assistant professor of civil engineering and geophysics at the California Institute of Technology said: "the earthquake occurred in the rural part of China. Presumably, many of the buildings were just built; they were not designed, so to speak." Swaminathan Krishnan further added: "There are very strong building codes in China, which take care of earthquake issues and seismic design issues. But many of these buildings presumably were quite old and probably were not built with any regulations overseeing them."
China's President Hu Jintao has said that the disaster response would be rapid. Just 90 minutes after the earthquake, Premier Wen Jiabao, who has an academic background in geomechanics, flew to the earthquake area to oversee the rescue work.
On May 12, 2008, China's Health Ministry said that it had sent 10 emergency medical teams to Wenchuan County in southwest China's Sichuan Province. On the same day,China's Chengdu Military Area Command dispatched 50,000 troops and armed police to help with disaster relief work in Wenchuan County. However, due to the rough terrain and close proximity of the quake's epicenter, the soldiers found it very difficult to get help to the rural regions of the province.
The State Disaster Relief Commission initiated a "Level II emergency contingency plan", which covers the most serious class of natural disasters. The plan rose to Level I at 22:15 CST, May 12.
Many rescue teams, including that of the Taipei City Fire Department, were reported ready to join the rescue effort in Sichuan as early as Wednesday. However, the Red Cross Society of China said that (on May 13) "it was inconvenient currently due to the traffic problem to the hardest hit areas closest to the epicenter." The Red Cross Society of China also stated that the disaster areas needs tents, medical supplies, drinking water and foods; however it recommends donating cash instead of other items as of now, as its not possible to reach roads that were completely damaged or places that were blocked off by landslides.
Taiwan has scheduled a direct chartered cargo flight operated by China Airlines from Taiwan Taoyuan International Airport to Chengdu Shuangliu International Airport to send a sum of 100 tonnes of relief supplies donated by the Tzu Chi Foundation and the Red Cross Society of Taiwan to the affected areas. Approval from the PRC Government has been sought, and the chartered flight is scheduled to depart Taipei at 17:00 CST, May 15 and arrive in Chengdu by 20:30 CST. A rescue team from the ROC Red Cross is also scheduled to depart Taipei on a Mandarin Airlines direct chartered flight to Chengdu at 15:00 CST on May 16.
Special thanks to Pearl Chiu for compiling the above article. Information was gathered from wikipedia, as well as other sources.