This is just so horrific, and in the wake of Myanmar too.
DUJIANGYAN, China (Reuters) – The death toll in China’s earthquake climbed past 13,000 on Tuesday and looked set to rise much higher after media said some 19,000 people were buried in rubble in just one area.
Rain and severed roads hampered rescuers in the mountainous area near the epicentre of Monday’s 7.9-magnitude quake in the southwestern province of Sichuan, China’s worst earthquake in three decades.
State media reported devastation as troops reached stricken villages near the epicentre in Wenchuan, a remote county cut off by landslides about 100 km (60 miles) northwest of the provincial capital, Chengdu.
Officials announced late on Tuesday that 500 Wenchuan residents were confirmed dead, Xinhua news agency reported. But the toll there and elsewhere is likely to soar.
Thirty People’s Liberation Army (PLA) troops arrived at Wenchuan’s Yingxiu township and rescued 300 residents, Xinhua said. But only 2,000 were found alive in the town of 12,000, according to a local official.
“They could hear people under the debris calling for help but no one could, because there were no professional rescue teams,” state television quoted the official He Biao as saying.
About 60,000 people were unaccounted for across Wenchuan.
“What we most need is medicine. There is no medicine, there are no doctors and after such a long time, no food,” He said.
In a school of 850 students in Qingchuan County, Sichuan, 90 were killed and another 191 were missing, a local official told Xinhua.
A further 18,645 people were buried under debris in the city of Mianyang, Xinhua said.
All those poor people. So many families will be left devastated for years to come after this. It doesn’t bear thinking about.
Sheryl Nantus
May 14
1:22 pm
My mother pointed out that it’s even more horrifying when you add in the “one-child” rule that China’s been enforcing for decades.
Many of these families have now lost their ONLY child…
horrible…
🙁
Bailey
May 14
2:17 pm
My god, those poor people. Mother Nature has been awfully harsh lately!
Rosie
May 14
3:03 pm
I’ve taken a break from reading stuff. It was horrifically hard to take it all in the past two days…and I agree on top of Mynamar more than tragic. I’ve been worrying about world resources to deal with two such huge catastrophes. Not that China tells or asks for much.
MissKitty
May 14
3:22 pm
Thank god, China at least is accepting help. Everywhere you listen, you only hear, they´re giving pictue book response to such a major catastrophe.
Unlike Myanmar, where children are dying, because they don´t get clean water. Something that would be so easily solved.
But instead the Junta are confiscating aid supplies, refusing to have aid workers into their country.
Both disasters are beyond words, both relief effords the total opposite of each other.
Whereas you see Chinese soldiers, packed with supplies climb up a broken mountain road, Myanmar´s officials are keeping their people starving in the heavy rains, going as far as to seize the goods, meant for them.
And the next cyclone is approaching Myanmar.
Sometimes, all you can do is pray.
Bernita
May 14
3:53 pm
The death toll is now estimated at 50,000.
AztecLady
May 14
4:16 pm
This is just beyond sad.
The volcano eruption in Chile, the cyclone hitting Myanmar and the Junta’s subsequent greed and cruelty, now this.