After the Shock of an Earthquake, Thousands Now Huddle in Fear of a Flood

QINGLIAN, China — It is a simple strand of red plastic hanging between two trees, but for residents of this battered town, it is the line between life and potential death.

People who evacuated because of flood threat live in tents in Qinglian.
On one side are 11,000 residents who have been huddling under plastic sheets since the May 12 earthquake devastated northern Sichuan Province. On the other is a lush plain of farmland and homes that government officials say will be washed away should a swollen reservoir of trapped river water break through the wall of rock, dirt and trees that holds it in place.

Soldiers stand sentinel on roads leading to the flood plain, which includes much of this picturesque town, blocking residents eager to till their fields or salvage clothing from their quake-damaged homes.

“It’s for their own good,” said Bian Dedi, 43, who was patrolling the deserted downtown on Thursday and shooing away the few residents who had slipped through the cordon. “In an instant, everything you see would be under water.”

For the past four days, a phalanx of earth-moving machines and soldiers has been struggling to complete a 300-yard sluice that would relieve pressure on a lake growing behind a landslide dam on the Jian River.

On Thursday, the lake, given the name Tangjiashan, rose another 5 feet, about 70 feet from the top of the barrier, and officials warned it might take another day or two before the drainage canal was complete.

Even then, the surge of water from the drainage canal itself will cause significant flooding, especially along the heavily populated Chengdu basin. On Friday, officials began moving another 30,000 people to higher ground in anticipation of the channel’s completion.

For the 1.3 million people living downstream, the looming threat is adding to the misery of coping with a disaster that has killed a confirmed 68,858 people, with 87,000 injured. Officials say 18,618 more are missing and presumed dead.

By Saturday, 197,000 people will have been relocated from low-lying towns and villages and the government has set in place an ambitious evacuation plan that would send in total more than a million people dashing to higher ground should the dam break.

If the dam fails, experts say, it is likely to begin in a burst.
“Once that process starts, it’s virtually impossible to do anything to decrease the water,” Alexander Densmore, a seismologist at Durham University in Britain, told Reuters. “When they fail, they tend to fail catastrophically.”

Here in Qinglian, a tourist town that straddles the Jian River shortly after it descends the mountains, residents have been forced to disassemble and rebuild their bamboo-and-plastic shelters five times in the past two weeks. Each move coincided with the worrisome expansion of the impounded lake, which is 30 miles upstream.
“I may be old, but I can still run if I have to,” said Chen Biqi, 70, a farmer who has been told to hike up a nearby knoll should the dam burst.

Compared with the terror of an earthquake, many people here view the potential peril of flooding as an annoyance, just one more indignation meted out by nature. Most people expressed confidence that the government’s evacuation plan would keep them from harm’s way.
“Earthquakes are unpredictable but at least we would have some warning if a flood is coming,” said Cheng Huayuan, 65, a retired factory worker who was among thousands of people camped out in Mianyang, a city of 600,000 that stretches out along both sides of the Fu River, a tributary of the Jian.

Like many of her neighbors, Ms. Cheng had a home to return to, but she said she was too unnerved by the constant aftershocks to sleep in her eighth-floor apartment. “You never know if the next tremor will bring the building down,” she said. “A flood we can handle.”

Not everyone is so confident. At Mianyang’s bus station for long-distance trips, thousands of people clamored for seats on buses headed to other cities on Thursday. Hundreds of others sought shelter atop a forested hill a mile outside the city.

Even though she is only a half-hour walk to the safety of the mountains, Deng Huilan, 45, said she often spent nights nodding off in a chair. “I don’t dare fall into a deep sleep,” said Ms. Deng, who is sharing a tent with a dozen family members, including her 80-year-old parents. “None of us can swim.”

Across the region, emergency-relief officials have created 50 evacuation routes and everyone, they say, is within two miles of higher ground. Some mountain towns would have little warning should the dam break, but in Mianyang, the second-largest city in Sichuan, residents would have three hours to scurry to safety.

Engineers have dubbed the scheme to build the canal “the one-third plan,” because the channel would drain about a third of the lake’s water. While not catastrophic, the flood of water from the canal would be 42 feet high, about 10 feet higher than the banks of the river in Mianyang, according to an official with the city’s information office who would only give his surname, Pu.

To get the word out, the authorities have outfitted a squadron of cars and trucks with loudspeakers. “People have plenty of time to move,” Tan Li, the party secretary of Mianyang’s earthquake relief center, told the China News Agency.

The nation has been fixated by the military’s battle against Tangjiashan Lake, much of it broadcast on state-run television, and the obstacles. On Thursday, rain grounded the army’s fleet of supply helicopters, forcing 1,000 soldiers to clamber along two miles of treacherous rock slides to bring fuel to the bulldozers. By the end of the day, engineers said the 50-foot-wide canal was more than a third complete.

Although attention has largely focused on Tangjiashan, 34 other so-called quake lakes have formed within the steep ravines that stretch north to the Tibetan plateau.

A rock slide that blocked the Huang River has forced the 140 residents of tiny Huangzhang to live inside a nearby school that sits far above the river.
“We wish the dam would break already so we could fix our homes,” said Wu Xianchen, 48, a farmer who ventured back into his shattered house to fetch a thermos as rain soaked his furniture. “We’re tired of all these disasters.”

In Qinglian, a stray dog pawed the ruins, and swallows swooped through an empty downtown that once teemed with tourists drawn by the town’s association with the poet Li Bai, who was born here 1,300 years ago. Two farmers suddenly emerged, baskets of produce bouncing on their backs.

One of the men, Hong Daozhi, 63, bragged that he had figured out a way to sneak around the roadblocks. Spring onions and peanuts are begging to be picked, he said, and the window for planting corn is quickly closing. Asked if he was worried about getting caught in a flood, he held his muddy hands up to the sky, let out a loud laugh and then disappeared behind a pile of rubble.
Huang Yuanxi contributed research from Chengdu. Jing Zhang contributed research from Beijing.

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Sichuan Photos

Sichuan Earthquake's Photos

Malaysia to send donation goods to earthquake-hit China

KUALA LUMPUR, June 3 (Xinhua) -- Malaysia will send relief goods worth of 1.5 million U.S. dollars to earthquake-hit China, Malaysian Foreign Minister Rais Yatim said on Tuesday.

Malaysia is scheduled to use its C-130 military aircraft to send these goods, comprising of tents, medical supplies and equipment, to China on June 8, Rais Yatim said at its ministry in Putrajaya, the administrative center of the Malaysian federal government.

On May 16, the Malaysian government announced that it will donate 1.5 million U.S. dollars to help the victims of the earthquake which hit Sichuan Province in southwest China.
Officials from the Malaysian Foreign Ministry said that Malaysia will send its donation in goods which China needed for the ongoing disaster relief.
On Tuesday, Rais also handed over Malaysia's donation of 4.3 million ringgit (1.34 million U.S. dollars ) to the victims of snowstorm in China through Cheng Yonghua, China's ambassador in Malaysia,
The donation included 1 million U.S. dollars from the Malaysian government and the rest came from the contribution by the public which was collected by the Malaysian Information Ministry and Sin Chew Jit Poh and Yayasan Nanyang Press.

Early February this year, the Malaysian government announced that it decided to donate 1 million U.S. dollars to help the victims of snowstorm in southwest China.

Rais said that the donation was handed over on Tuesday as the donation process and the consolidation of accounts had taken a considerable amount of time.

Ambassador Cheng said that the Malaysian government and people extended their assistance and supports to China when China was confronted with the disaster caused by severe snowstorm early this year.

In May this year when China's Sichuan Province was struck by a strong earthquake, Malaysia again extended their assistance, Cheng said. Malaysians of various races and from all walks of life donated money and materials generously to express their solicitude, he said. The scenarios were heart-touching.
He noted that Malaysia's valuable assistance is the testimony of the friendship of the Malaysian people with the Chinese people.
This will be engraved on the chronicle of China-Malaysia relationship, he added.
A destructive 8.0-magnitude earthquake hit China's southwestern province of Sichuan on May 12. Some 69,107 people have been killed in the mountainous region where the quake center was located, while 18,230 others remain missing, according to the latest figures released by the Chinese government.

The Injured and missing of Sichuan

Children buried alive photo

So far, 40,000 people are known to have lost their lives, tens of thousands are still missing and five million people are thought to have been left homeless.

What has been a rescue is now shifting more and more towards a reconstruction operation.
More than a week since the earthquake struck, people are still searching for their missing relatives.
From Chengdu, the capital of Sichuan province, Quentin Sommerville sent this report.

Listen to his report.

(reference:bbc.co.uk)

Chelsea to play Chinese club to raise money for earthquake victims

LONDON: Chelsea will travel to Macau to play a Chinese club from a region badly hit by last month's massive earthquake.
The Champions League finalist will play Chengdu Blades, which is based in China's Sichuan province, on July 26.
The Blues hope to raise money for relief operation and victims of the 7.9 magnitude quake on May 12 killing 69,146 people.
According to the Chinese government, 17,516 are still missing and about 5 million people were made homeless.
"We did look at playing a game in Chengdu and now, for very obvious and tragic reasons, that will not be possible," Chelsea chief executive Peter Kenyon said Tuesday. "But we are delighted to assist in raising awareness for the earthquake relief effort."
On its preseason tour, Chelsea will play Chinese super league team Guangzhou Pharmaceutical on July 23 at the city's Olympic Stadium .

( reference: Herald Tribune )

PCCC To Donate RM500,000 To Earthquake Victims In China

PENANG, May 16 (Bernama) -- The Penang Chinese Chamber of Commerce (PCCC)will donate RM500,000 for the earthquake victims in Sichuan province, China through the Chinese embassy in Kuala Lumpur.Its president Datuk Khor Teng Tong said the amount came from a donation drive organised by PCCC and the Penang Chinese Assembly Hall's fund-raising committee."Various companies and individuals who are sympathetic towards the earthquake victims have contributed to the fund," he told a press conference here today.The collection will be handed over to the embassy on May 21.Khor said those who wished to contribute to the victims should make out their cheques payable to the Embassy of the People's Republic of China in Malaysia and hand over the cheques to the embassy's representative on May 21.The PCCC has also donated RM20,000 to the Nargis Cyclone victims in Myanmar's Irrawaddy Delta.-- BERNAMA