Powerful Quake Ravages China, Killing Thousands
比较客观，用词不错
CHENGDU, China — A powerful
earthquakestruck southwestern China on Monday, toppling thousands of homes,factories and offices, trapping students in schools, and killing atleast 10,000 people, the country’s worst natural disaster in threedecades.
The quake, which was estimated preliminarily to have had a magnitude of7.9, ravaged a mountainous region outside Chengdu, capital of SichuanProvince, just after lunchtime Monday, destroying 80 percent ofstructures in some of the towns and small cities near its epicenter,Chinese officials said. Its tremors were felt as far away as Vietnamand set off another, smaller quake in the outskirts of Beijing, 900miles away.
Landslides, power failures and fallen mobile phone towers left muchof the affected area cut off from the outside world and limitedinformation about the damage. But snapshots of concentrated devastationsuggested that the death toll that could rise significantly as rescueworkers reached the most heavily damaged towns. State media reported atmidday on Tuesday that 10,000 people remained buried in Mianzhu, one ofthe cities near the epicenter in Wenchuan.
At least two largeschools, each with nearly 1,000 students, were reduced to piles ofconcrete dust and debris, setting off a frantic search for survivorsthat stretched through the night.
Two chemical factories inShifang were destroyed, spilling 80 tons of toxic liquid ammonia,forcing 6,000 people to evacuate their homes. The destruction of asteam turbine factory in the city of Mianzhu killed at least 60 workersand left 500 others missing, officials said on Tuesday.
Thequake is China’s biggest natural disaster since another earthquakeleveled the city of Tangshan in eastern China in 1976, leaving 240,000people dead and posing a severe challenge to the governing CommunistParty, which initially tried to cover up the catastrophe.
This time, officials quickly mobilized 50,000 soldiers to help with rescue efforts, state media said. Prime Minister
Wen Jiabao flew to the scene and was shown coordinating disaster response teams from the cabin of his jet.
Theprime minister later stood outside the damaged edifice of theTraditional Medicine Hospital in the city of Dujiangyan, shoutingencouragement at people trapped in its ruins.
“Hang on a bitlonger,” he said in televised remarks. “The troops are rescuing you. Aslong as there is the slightest hope, we will never relax our efforts.”
Thequake was the latest in a series of events that have disrupted China’splanning for the Olympic Games in August, including widespread unrestamong the country’s ethnic Tibetan population, which lives in largenumbers in the same part of Sichuan Province where the earthquakestruck.
China’s leaders often respond assertively to naturaldisasters, fearing a strong popular reaction if they bungle rescueefforts. But a complex relief operation on the scale that may be neededin Sichuan could strain Chinese resources even as the
United Nations and many charitable groups are busy providing aid to Myanmar, hit by a huge
cyclone this month.
Localleaders may also face intense scrutiny of their compliance withbuilding codes. Since the Tangshan earthquake, China has required thatnew structures withstand major quakes. But the collapse of schools,hospitals and factories in several different areas around Sichuan mayraise questions about how rigorously such codes have been enforcedduring China’s epic building boom.
The powerful initial quakestruck at 2:28 p.m. local time, or 2:28 a.m. Eastern time, nearWenchuan County, according to China’s State Seismological Bureau. Mostof the heavy damage appeared to be concentrated in nearby towns, whichby Chinese standards are not heavily populated. Chengdu, the largestcity in the area, with a population of about 10 million, is about 60miles away and did not appear to have suffered major damage or heavycasualties.
But officials had yet to describe the impact inWenchuan itself, which has a population of 112,000 and is home to theWolong Nature Reserve, the largest panda reserve in China. The countyof Beichuan, on the way from Chengdu to Wenchuan, suffered severalthousand deaths, state media said.
According to Chinesetelevision, 100 police officers were clambering across the region’sonly road, which was blocked by massive rock slides, to open apassageway to Wenchuan, but had yet to reach it on Tuesday morning.
China’s massive Three Gorges Dam, a few hundred miles east of the earthquake’s epicenter, reported no immediate problems.
At dawn on Tuesday morning in Chengdu, clusters of people were huddledoutside, many saying they were too fearful of aftershocks to goindoors. Many wore plastic slickers to protect them from a steadydrizzle.
Wang Zihong, 35, a businessman from Gansu Province, had spent 12hours outside his hotel, squatting with others on a street corner.
“It was a terrible shock,” he said. “I couldn’t stand up straight. We were on the second floor and we ran outside.”
Chengdu’s Huaxi Hospital, one of the largest in western China, startedreceiving patients from surrounding counties on Monday afternoon. ByTuesday morning, 180 patients had arrived from hard-hit surroundingcounties.
“Seven thousand people have died in Beichuan, a singlecounty, and we think Wenchuan will be similar, too, because it was theepicenter,” said Kang Zhilin, a spokesman for the hospital. He added,“The first patients who came had jumped from buildings because theywere frightened.”
After the tremors shook Chengdu, roughly 4,000frightened patients were relocated from wards on the hospital’s upperfloors to a courtyard outdoors. By Tuesday morning, the patients weresitting in the rain, covered in plastic.
A woman, Tang Hong, 50,sat beside her injured husband, Yan Chaozhong, in the hospital. Theyhad arrived early in the morning from Dujiangyan County, one place thathad suffered heavy damage. They had been inside their fourth-floorapartment when the quake hit. “It was violent,” she said. “Even when wecrouched down, it flattened us.”
Ms. Tang said she and herhusband had tried to escape down a stairwell, but a second tremorknocked her husband down the stairs, and he broke three ribs. She saidfour six-story buildings on her street had been flattened. She wept asshe described how a school for handicapped and deaf students collapsedwhile the children were in class. “It was horrible,” she said. “Theentire school building collapsed.”
Minutes after the westerntemblor struck, a second, smaller quake struck Tongzhou, an outerdistrict of Beijing. Thousands of office workers were evacuated in thecapital city, but no damage was reported there.
“I suddenly feltvery dizzy, as if I were heavily drunk,” said Zeng Hui, who works onthe 22nd floor of an office tower in Beijing. “I thought I wasseriously ill, then I looked around and saw my colleagues felt the sameway. We were stunned.”
There were reports of fatalities inChongqing Municipality, near Sichuan, where two primary schools weredamaged. Four students died and more than 100 others were injured,state media reported.
Xinhua, the state-run news agency,devoted extensive coverage to the disaster, publishing regular updateson the situation, including latest death tolls, on its Chinese andEnglish Web sites.
The relatively vigorous flow of informationand the fast response from top officials and rescue workers stood instark contrast to the way China handled the Tangshan earthquake, or theway the military junta that rules neighboring Myanmar has managed theaftermath of a giant cyclone that killed nearly 32,000 people therethis month, according to Burmese government estimates.
Efforts toreach people near the epicenter of the bigger quake in western Chinawere hindered by damage to the telephone system. Some 2,300 towers usedto transmit mobile phone signals had fallen, the country’s main mobilephone company reported. The earthquake also disrupted air trafficcontrol in western China, interfering with flights between Asia andEurope on Monday afternoon, although flight services were restored bythe evening.
Cathay Pacific Airways announced that it hadcanceled two flights between Hong Kong and London — one in eachdirection — and had delayed the departure of a Monday afternoon flightfrom Hong Kong to London by 19 hours, to Tuesday morning.
WhileChina Mobile acknowledged extensive damage to its cellphone towers, itis less clear how much damage occurred to the separate communicationsnetwork that China’s authorities maintain for natural disasters andother contingencies.
Communications equipment vendors attendinga police equipment exhibition in Beijing last month said Chinamaintained a separate network using different frequencies and otherequipment from the main cellphone network. The separate network allowsthe police and other agencies to respond to emergencies even when themain landline and cellphone networks are overwhelmed with calls byresidents.
Many Western countries also maintain separatecommunications systems for emergencies. China is still upgrading itsemergency network by buying equipment from Motorola and other foreigncompanies, communications industry officials said at the exhibition.
Temporary disruption of the air traffic control system in western Chinastrongly suggested that the authorities’ communications gear might alsohave been damaged at least temporarily. China has worked closely withthe Federal Aviation Administration in the United States to improve airsafety, and air traffic control operations in the United States havebackup communications systems to avoid disruptions.