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JISHOU, HUNAN — The earthquake this week in China was in the western part of the country, in Qinghai Province, so it was nowhere near here. We never felt a thing.
The quake hit near a town of 70,000, in Yushu county, near the Sichuan provincial line and 800 km from the site of the horrible Wenchuan earthquake in 2008, as you can see from this map, copyright the BBC.
Hunan, where I live, is just east of Sichuan. China’s provinces are big, like Canada’s, so the apparent proximity translates into thousands of kilometers. Even so, my friends here say they could feel the ground heave when the 7.8 magnitude quake hit Wenchuan in 2008.
Wednesday’s quake was 6.9 on the magnitude scale, bad enough, but not as powerful as the 2008 one. Deaths are estimated at 589 now, and about 10,000 more are injured. Yushu is a rural area, and most folks do not live in the ubiquitous concrete-block homes. Most injuries are from wooden structures collapsing. I have not heard yet whether children going to school that morning may have been inside their concrete schools.
Stay tuned. I’ll try to give more details later.
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JISHOU, HUNAN — The survivors of the March 12, 2008, Sichuan earthquake have a lot to say, but the Chinese government won’t let foreign journalists hear it.
Parents whose children died when school buildings collapsed in the 7.9 magnitude quake accuse the government of being complicit in allowing shoddy construction in Wenchuan County.
This reporter for the Financial Times tried to interview one such mother, but men in an unmarked car forcibly prevented him from talking to her. The Chinese government, naturally, denies any such suppression is happening.
I can’t seem to embed the video. Here’s the link: Financial Times report.
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JISHOU, HUNAN — I am writing this brief post in between reading student diaries and essays. The local time is 3:00 pm. One year ago, at 2:28 pm, a massive earthquake hit Wenchuan County in Sichuan Province, which adjoins western Hunan.
The magnitude 8 quake killed more than 69,000 people, including more than 5,300 schoolchildren, injured more than 370,000, and left at least 4.8 million homeless. There are still thousands of residents unaccounted for.
My students here in Hunan tell me they could feel the earthquake in their own middle schools and at Jishou University. Buildings swayed in Beijing and Shanghai hundreds of miles from the epicenter in central Sichuan. No one knew the extent of the disaster until a few hours later, as the nation heard reports of derailed trains, ruined highways, non-existent cell phone coverage, and piles of rubble where buildings and schools once stood.
A year later, the region is still far from recovered. While China has done an admirable job in responding to the disaster, better in many ways than the US responded to the less deadly Louisiana hurricanes, there is some discontent. There are recriminations that schools were shoddily constructed, inviting catastrophic collapses in an earthquake. The government has squelched public protests about poor school construction. Rumors say some provincial officials have absconded with millions of dollars in national and international reconstruction donations. Meanwhile, residents complain they are still homeless, still have no work, still cannot find enough to eat.
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