Earthquake in Sichuan, an Expat's Perspective - Part 1

taken from the Earthquake Thread...

This has been my first opportunity to get online since the Earthquake hit yesterday. All is fine with my family, but this event has really shaken up my wife, who briefly hid under the table of our condo with my new-born son, then ran out the building, down the street to fetch my older son Nathaniel at the Kindergarten; finally, wisely fleeing by taxi to a suburban area where grandma and grandpa live.

At the time, I was in Guanghan, at the Civil Aviation University, 40 km north of Chengdu and closer to the epicenter. It was a surreal and terrifying experience. I've been in a tornado and felt the helplessness when pitted against mother nature. But, you can hide from a tornado down in a basement.

There is really no escaping an Earthquake. I was just about to begin class on the 4th floor when we felt a shockwave rumble the building. We thought maybe a plane crashed or there was an explosion nearby. But then the building heaved. As we hustled down the hallways and down the stairs, the sensation was the same one you get when you take off in an airplane; with that sudden weightlessness and then the dip of the plane. Cement was flying and so was glass.

Very fortunately, the building did not crumble down upon us. I can still envision one extremely hard hit and I thought the end was coming. The building rumbled so loud, it seemed to be coming down. In that instant, I spied the window of the 3rd floor staircase and made my plan. Then the rumble slowed. Everyone made it out safely.

All in all, we were extremely lucky.

More than 12,000 people, at last count and rising quickly, have died in the villages and towns Northwest of Chengdu. I have seen the destruction and in some cases it is complete destruction. Homes, hotels, hospitals, schools and apartment buildings have crumbled with people in them.

News is still trickling in and we still haven't seen the worst of it yet. Of this, I am sure because I have been up in those hills in Aba many, many times and I know that the construction up there could not withstand the hit we took in Guanghan; and we were 50km from the epicenter.

The country is helping as best it can. The Army is up there already and the local businesses in Chengdu have already started supplying aid. The Chinese people really pull together when these things happen. That is something one can see quite evidently.

Calm has pretty much been restored to Chengdu now and people have for the most part, made their way back to their homes. Some holdouts are still taking shelter where they can outside.

But now the problem is the rain. If you can picture a mountainside road, barely two lanes across and just enough to squeeze through a couple vehicles either way in the best of times. And then picture half the mountain tumbling down across it and burying it for hundreds of meters and about 15-20 feet high; then you can picture the monumental task facing emergency crews to get to the hard hit areas. You can only fit one excavator at a time on that narrow roadbelt, to start digging through the debris and there are dozens of huge rock-slides like that all the way up the winding road to Wenchuan, Aba from DuJiangYan.

Airlift is the best way to get in right now. The death toll in Chengdu has climbed from early low reports of 45 people, to now over 1,000. Mianyang; Sichuan's number 2 city has lost over 7,000; Deyang over 2,000. There are reports of an entire village just North of Wenchuan having diappeared. And no one has heard from the Panda base at Wolong yet. There are 130 Pandas out there and more in the wild. Let's hope they faired well.

I pity the crews out there working in this heavy rain tonight. The human toll; let alone the emotional toll on the aid workers and victims will certainly be staggering.

Canadian businessman Matt Vegh has been in Sichuan for nearly 10 years. He is also a columnist/editor for the Chengdu Daily Newsgroup and Chief Editor of the Sichuan Travel Guide Magazine.