China Earthquake News

Powerful photos from China taken in the last few days. See more of the 633 pictures HERE

Schoolmates of children who were killed in an earthquake look through the ruins of the Fuxin No.2 Primary School in Wufu, in China's southwest Sichuan province Friday May 23, 2008. The girls were in a separate building at the school when the building where their friends were collapsed. Parents of the 200 children who died when the school collapsed in an earthquake on May 12 are demanding an investigation into alleged shoddy construction.

Three schoolmates of children who were killed in an earthquake look at photos of their friends at a shrine at the Fuxin No.2 Primary School

Pandas eat food at the China Wolong Giant Panda Protection and Research Center in southwest China's Sichuan Province, on Friday May 23, 2008. Three of ten pandas that went missing after the May 12 earthquake have not been found, Xinhua said. China has sent emergency bamboo-shoot rations to pandas at a reserve in the Sichuan earthquake zone because no one there is collecting it for them, state media said on Thursday

A health worker sprays sanitary chemicals on freshly buried graves of students from a middle school in Muyu town, Qingchuan county, Sichuan province, May 21, 2008, on a hill above the school where hundreds of earthquake victims were buried in shallow graves and covered with earth.

Students attend a psycho-social assistance class at a temporary school at the township of Zundao in the earthquake-hit area of Mianzhu county, Sichuan Province May 23, 2008. The classes are meant to aid children suffering emotional trauma after the major earthquake that struck the region on May 12.

A woman and her child wait for aid on a roadside in front of a demolished school in the devastated town of Yingxiu in southwest China's quake-stricken Sichuan province, The death toll in Sichuan has risen to 55,239, with another 24,949 missing, a senior government official said Friday.

Torchbearers exchange Olympic Flame during Beijing Olympic torch relay in Shanghai, China, Friday May 23, 2008. The Olympic torch relay in Shanghai was postponed due to a three-day mourning period for victims of the earthquake.

Temporary housing built for residents affected by an earthquake is seen in Dujiangyan, west of Chengdu, Sichuan Province May 22, 2008. Millions of people became homeless after the massive earthquake.

A young earthquake survivor looks at the camera as her mother holds her next to their temporary tent in Qingchuan County, Sichuan province, May 21, 2008.

A worker arranges urns filled with the remains of the May 12 earthquake victims at a crematorium in Suining, Sichuan province May 21, 2008.

In this photo released by China's Xinhua News Agency, military nurses give a shower to newborn baby Zhang Hongyang at a field hospital in Shifang city, southwest China's Sichuan Province Tuesday, May 20, 2008. Zhang Hongyang, born on May 16, is the first baby born in the hospital after the earthquake, and another 17 babies were born in recent days at the field hospital.

Earthquake Info from Half the Sky

Dear Friends,
As word comes of the hundreds, maybe thousands of children lost in theearthquake, I am finding these emails almost too painful to write. When Ithink of so many parents who have lost their only child - so many children newly orphaned - so many families destroyed - there are no words….

Still, I will continue to write daily with any new information that has been given to us and confirmed. Again, please do not contact us to inquire about individual institutions. We will give you all of the information we have. If you do not hear from us about a particular place, it likely is not affected. At any rate, we don’t have any information beyond what I am passing along to you.
As of now, Thursday afternoon in China, there are 14,866 people confirmed dead, 14,463 in Sichuan Province. There are 22,438 people reported missing – 21,020 of them in Deyang alone. There have been 3,300 aftershocks and they continue.

Here is the confirmed information we have regarding children in welfare institutions:
Chengdu: The city continues to experience aftershocks and the institutiondirector is afraid the water supply will be cut off again, so has requested disposable diapers. They are having trouble finding sufficient supplies of milk and formula. All children in foster care have been located and are fine. The institution has structural cracks but was built to current earthquake standards and is fundamentally solid. All the children remain on the first floor of the children’s building, mostly in the cafeteria, and, weather-permitting, outside while awake. We’ve posted a few photos on our website.

Chongqing and Yibin orphanages are fine – no building damage, no shortageof supplies.

The orphanages below report problems. However, please note that not a single child has been injured; all are fine:

- Zigong CWI needs bedding, powdered milk, crackers and disposable diapers- Neijiang CWI has suffered some structural damage; one or two children’sdormitories, office building and laundry room have cracked walls.

-Nanchong 2nd SWI has cracks in walls, substantial damage to the ceilingof a staff building, needs tents
- Mianyang Zitong CWI has severely damaged walls. Children have been moved to a military base. Urgent need for diapers, bedding, powdered milk and purified water
-Hanzhong CWI (Shaanxi)- Quite a few water pipes burst, the water tower had cracks. Children have been evacuated and there is need for more tents, bedding and purified water. We’ve posted a few photos on our website.
-Dujiangyan SWI has evacuated all children. They have no tap water or electricity in their temporary shelter. They urgently need food, purified water, diapers and powdered milk.

We are still unable to reach these institutions: Deyang CWI (78 children), Abazhou CWI (52 children), Guangyuan SWI, Mianzhu SWI

One of our HTS Beijing staff, Ma Lang, is a native of Mianyang, Sichuan,close to the epicenter. HTS’ Director of Child Development, Ma Lang is both a pediatrician and a child development specialist. She is on her way home right now to make use of her skills both medically and to help children traumatized by this disaster. We are so proud of Lang and wish her safe travels. She has promised to share her journey with all of us. So soon you’ll be hearing from us both!

Usually just before June 1, China’s Children’s Day, Half the Sky announces a special appeal to help us fund new orphanage programs in the fall. While we are committed to starting those new programs and know we will need help to make it happen, we just don’t feel we can ask for help improving lives while children in Sichuan are losing theirs. There must be a Children’s Day Challenge this year but not at this time.
Please do what you can to help children in trouble now, and remember to help the kids of HTS a little later this year.

Our hearts and prayers today are especially with the parents who have lost their children in the collapse of schools - Muyu, Xinjian, Juyuan, Liangping, and the rest.

Please give what you can to help the children who survive go on with their lives.

If you would like to donate to Half the Sky’s Children’s Earthquake Fund, it would be great if you would do so at Global Giving. The Ford Motor Company announced today that they will match every gift!

If you prefer to donate directly to Half the Sky, of course that’s fine. Here are the various ways: You can donate by calling Half the Sky (+1 510 525 3377) or on our website

If you would like a Canadian tax receipt, please donate at http://www.canadahelps.org/CharityProfilePage.aspx?CharityID=s86248

If you would like a Hong Kong tax receipt, please call us at +852 25205266 or online at https://www.paydollar.com/b2c2/eng/charity/payInfo.jsp?charityId=4947

We have been so moved by your support already. Thank you!

with love,
Jenny
Jenny Bowen
Executive Director
Half the Sky Foundation
http://www.halfthesky.org/

7.8 Earthquake hits SW China

BEIJING — A powerful earthquake struck a mountainous region of western China on Monday, killing at least 107 people and trapping more than 900 students beneath a collapsed high school as tremors shook buildings for hundreds of miles and were felt as far away as Vietnam and Thailand, according to interviews and reports in China’s state media.

The 7.8 magnitude earthquake struck in Sichuan Province on Monday afternoon and raised immediate concerns that the death toll could rapidly rise. State media reports said “rows of houses” had collapsed near the quake’s epicenter. By early evening, state media had reported 107 deaths and 34 injuries in three provinces and Chongqing Municipality.
Prime Minister Wen Jiabao, who arrived in the earthquake region on Monday night, described the situation as a "very severe earthquake disaster." President Hu Jintao ordered an “all out” effort to aid people in the earthquake region while soldiers were dispatched for disaster relief efforts. Minutes after the western temblor, a second, smaller quake struck hundreds of miles away, near Beijing. Thousands of office workers were evacuated.
“I suddenly felt very dizzy, as if I were heavily drunk,” said Zeng Hui, who works on the 22nd floor of an office tower in Beijing. “I thought I was seriously ill, then I looked around and saw my colleagues felt the same way. We were stunned.”
The initial quake struck at 2:28 p.m., or 2:28 a.m., Eastern time, near Wenchuan County, according to China’s State Seismological Bureau. People across much of China and as far away as Thailand and Vietnam reported feeling the tremors.
Wenchuan is home to the Wolong Nature Reserve, the country’s most famous panda reserve, and is located about 55 miles from Chengdu, the capital of Sichuan, which has a population of roughly 12 million people.
Early reports and telephone interviews suggested that Chengdu had been spared any significant problems, but officials were struggling to assess the full scope of the damage in Wenchuan and elsewhere because of the disruption in communications caused by the earthquake. More than 2,300 cell phone towers were knocked down by the quake, according to China Mobile, the country’s top carrier.
Xinhua, the official news agency, said the 107 fatalities were spread across Sichuan, neighboring Chongqing Municipality as well as in Gansu and Yunnan provinces. Damage is believed to be especially severe in Dujiangyan, a county of 600,000 people located near the epicenter. One local official described rows of collapsed houses, Xinhua reported.
Early Monday evening, Xinhua also flashed an emergency report from Dujiangyan describing that nearly 900 students were feared trapped after a high school collapsed. Most of the telephones in the city were not functioning, and the Xinhua report could not be independently verified.
Earlier in the day, the first reports of fatalities came in the east in Chongqing Municipality, where two primary schools were damaged. Four pupils died and more than 100 others were injured, state media reported. Another person was reportedly killed beneath a collapsed water tower in Sichuan Province.
China is prone to seismic activity and has suffered horrific earthquakes in the recent past. In 1976, a 7.8 magnitude earthquake hit the city of Tangshan, located roughly 70 miles from Beijing. More than 240,000 people were killed and nearly every building was leveled. Communist Party officials initially covered up the extent of the death toll. Many of China’s biggest cities, including Beijing, are located in high-risk earthquake zones.
Monday’s smaller 3.9 magnitude earthquake in Beijing struck at 2:35 p.m. in Tongzhou, a district in the eastern half of the city. Many people in the city felt nothing at all, while others, especially those in high-rises, were alarmed by a swaying sensation. Thousands of workers were evacuated as a precaution.
“Suddenly, everything around me started moving and swinging,” said Xie Zhuofei, a salesman with a 17th floor office in Beijing. “I could hardly stand. Then I realized it was an earthquake. We went out immediately.”
Efforts to reach people near the epicenter of the bigger quake in western China were hindered by the damaged telephone system. But receptionists at different hotels in Chengdu said the earthquake appeared not to have caused any major problems in the city. Xinhua showed photographs of minor flooding caused by damage to an underground water pipe, but, as yet, the city seemed largely undamaged.

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