China’s Hu Cuts Short Brazil Visit After Qinghai Earthquake
By Bloomberg News
April 15 (Bloomberg) -- Chinese President Hu Jintao cut short a visit to Latin America after 930 people were reported dead or missing in yesterday’s earthquake in a remote western part of the country.
About 100,000 people have been displaced since the 6.9- magnitude quake flattened the town of Jiegu in Qinghai province, Zou Ming, director of disaster relief for the Ministry of Civil Affairs, said today in Beijing. Fifteen thousand homes were destroyed, 617 people are dead and 313 are missing, he said.
The deaths of 66 students and 10 teachers in school collapses echoed the nation’s last major temblor in 2008.
Hu decided to return home to take charge of the crisis, Brazilian Foreign Minister Celso Amorim told reporters in Brasilia. Premier Wen Jiabao arrived in the region today, China Radio International reported.
Rescue efforts are being hampered by the town’s remote location about 800 kilometers (497 miles) from the provincial capital of Xining. More than 85 percent of the homes were destroyed in Jiegu, part of an ethnic Tibetan region more than 4,000 meters (13,123 feet) above sea level.
“Because of the high altitude many members of the rescue team as well as sniffer dogs are suffering from altitude sickness,” Miao Chonggang, deputy director of the China Earthquake Administration, said at the same Beijing briefing. “This kind of long distance rescue operation is a major difficulty.”
‘Enough’ Relief Workers
In Beijing, Zou of the Civil Affairs Ministry, said sufficient supplies would arrive within two days. There are some 10,000 rescue and medical personnel in the area, which is “enough,” he said at a press briefing.
Among the dead are children and teachers who were crushed in demolished schools, the official Xinhua News Agency said. The collapse of classrooms in neighboring Sichuan province during a May 2008 earthquake that killed about 90,000 people sparked protests from grieving parents and accusations that corrupt officials ignored sub-standard construction practices.
Only 10 percent of houses at the quake site were made from cement, Miao said, adding that the predominantly mud, wood and brick buildings were almost all flattened.
The Ministry of Civil Affairs is sending 5,000 tents, 50,000 cotton coats and 50,000 quilts to the region, Xinhua reported.
Airstrip Reopens
Hundreds of rescuers headed to the site after a damaged airstrip reopened late yesterday, said a spokesman for the Qinghai government’s news department who would only give his surname, Zhang. A single road leading to the area is too narrow for large vehicles, he said.
China Central Television showed residents digging through rubble with their hands. Others struggled through fire and smoke to reach people trapped under a collapsed hotel. Temperatures were forecast to drop as low as minus 3 degrees Celsius (26.6 degrees Fahrenheit). Electricity to the area has been cut, roads damaged and telecommunications disrupted. A reservoir cracked, and workers are trying to prevent flooding, Xinhua said.
The Red Cross is helping the government with search and rescue and has provided thousands of relief tents, said Paul Conneally, a spokesman for the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies in Geneva. Taiwan, which has been governed separately from mainland China since 1949, is sending a 23-person team to the area, Xinhua reported.
Rescue Efforts
Efforts “by every means” should be made to rescue those trapped, Hu, who was at a summit meeting this week in Washington, and Wen said in a statement posted on the central government’s Web site.
Authorities have dispatched several thousand rescue workers, police, firefighters, soldiers and medical workers to the area, and Vice Premier Hui Liangyu flew in to oversee relief efforts. China Mobile Ltd., China Telecom Corp. and China Unicom Hong Kong Ltd. are working to restore phone connections, Xinhua reported.
President Barack Obama’s administration released a statement expressing condolences to the families of victims and offering help.
At least one-third of the buildings at the Yushu Vocational School collapsed, including a girls’ dormitory and a multimedia center, Xinhua reported. Dozens of parents waited there for news about dozens of people believed to be trapped in the rubble.
Many of the buildings in the region, which has a significant ethnic-Tibetan population, are made of wood and mud, Xinhua said.
Ethic Tibetans and Uighurs, in neighboring Xinjiang province, complain that they are discriminated against by the majority Han Chinese and haven’t benefited from the country’s economic growth. Deadly clashes broke out in both regions in the past few years, undermining the central government’s main stated aim of ensuring social stability.
Qinghai has a population of 5.57 million, making it among China’s smallest provinces. Its economy is only larger than Tibet’s and in land mass, the 721,000-square-kilometer province is bigger than Texas. Qinghai was used as a nuclear weapons testing site.
--Michael Forsythe. Editors: John Brinsley, Julian Nundy
China?s Hu Cuts Short Brazil Visit After Qinghai Earthquake - Bloomberg.com
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Funny and heartless western reporters never forget to add a touch of negative tones to their writings about China, even for such a grave, politically irrelevant, calamity...