Watch the Chinese MANAGE!
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----------------------------------------------------> Date: Wed, 14 May 2008
09:48:24 -0700> From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: [email protected]> Subject:
[Assam] China says troops rush to plug dangerous cracks in dam> > Dam Alert!>
Danger of dam in earth quake zone.>
===============================================> From the NYT> China says
troops rush to plug dangerous cracks in dam > \> By AUDRA ANG, Associated Press
Writer 1 hour, 41 minutes ago > > > HANWANG, China - Thousands of Chinese
soldiers rushed on Wednesday to repair a dam badly cracked by the country's
massive earthquake, while rescuers arrived for the first time in the epicenter
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> China's top economic planning body said that the quake had damaged 391
mostly small dams. It left "extremely dangerous" cracks in the Zipingpu Dam
upriver from the earthquake-hit city of Dujiangyan and some 2,000 soldiers were
sent to repair the damage, the official Xinhua News Agency said.> Xinhua said
Dujiangyan would be "swamped" if major problems emerged at the dam.> He Biao,
the director of the Aba Disaster Relief headquarters in northern Sichuan
province, said there were also concerns over dams closer to the epicenter.>
"Currently, the most dangerous problems are several reservoirs near Wenchuan,"
he said, according to a transcript on the CCTV Web site.> "There are already
serious problems with the Tulong Reservoir on the Min River. It may collapse.
If that happens, it would affect several power plants below and be extremely
dangerous," he said.> Rescuers who hiked in to the epicenter scoured flattened
mountain villages for thousands of missing and buried victims, and the death
toll of nearly 15,000 appeared likely to soar far higher.> Help also began to
arrive helicopter in some of the hardest-to-reach areas, where some victims
trapped for more than two days under collapsed buildings were still being
pulled out alive. But the enormous scale of the devastation meant that
resources were stretched thin, and makeshift aid stations and refugee centers
were springing up over the disaster area the size of Belgium.> Leveled
hospitals forced doctors and nurses to treat survivors in the street.
Helicopters dropped food and medicine to isolated towns. Mourners burned money
before rows of bodies, believing their lost relatives could use it in the
afterlife.> Xinhua quoted government officials as saying rescuers who hiked
Wednesday into the city of Yingxiu in Wenchuan county — the epicenter of the
quake — found only 2,300 survivors in the town of about 10,000, with another
1,000 badly hurt.> The official death toll rose Wednesday to 14,866, Xinhua
said, but it was not immediately clear if that number included the 7,700
reported dead in Yingxiu. In Sichuan province alone, another 25,788 people were
buried and 1,405 were missing, provincial vice governor Li Chengyun said,
according to Xinhua.> Twelve Americans were found safe near the epicenter of
the quake.> A spokeswoman for the World Wildlife Fund said the 12 members of
the wildlife group were reached by satellite phone earlier in the day. The team
was near the world's most famous panda preserve in Wolong, whose pandas were
reported safe Tuesday.> Unlike previous natural disasters in China, official
media have reported prominently on the quake and state TV canceled regular
programming to run 24-hour coverage.> Scenes of destruction and death have been
shown, along with prominent focus on Premier Wen Jiabao, who rushed Monday to
Sichuan to oversee the rescue work. He has been shown crawling into collapsed
buildings to urge survivors to hang on with impassioned pleas, and seen
reassuring children who had lost parents.> Wen was there when one 3-year-old
girl trapped for more than 40 hours under the bodies of her parents was pulled
to safety Wednesday in Beichuan region, Xinhua said.> Rescuers found Song Xinyi
on Tuesday morning, but were unable to pull her out right away due to fears the
debris above her would collapse. She was fed and shielded from the rain until
rescuers extricated her from the rubble.> Elsewhere, a 34-year-old woman who
was eight months pregnant was rescued after spending 50 hours under debris in
Dujiangyan. "It's a miracle brought about by us all working together," said Sun
Guoli, fire chief of the nearby provincial capital Chengdu, who supervised the
rescue. The show of official empathy was aimed at reassuring the public about
the government's response and also showing the world the country is ready to
host the Beijing Olympics in August. Wednesday's leg of the Olympic torch relay
in the southeastern city of Ruijin began with a minute of silence. President Hu
Jintao presided over an emergency meeting of the Communist Party's highest body
Wednesday, the second such meeting since the quake happened. Hu, also
secretary-general of the party, urged the military, police and others to rush
to the disaster area to help. The death toll from the quake was expected to
rise when rescuers reach other towns in Wenchuan county that remained cut off.
"The> Communist Party Central Committee has not forgotten this place," Wen said
after flying by helicopter to Wenchuan, adding that some 50 injured people had
been airlifted from the area. Relief efforts were aided in their third day by
the clearing of storms that had prevented flights over some of the worst-hit
towns. Military helicopters seen flying north over Dujiangyan, and Xinhua said
some had airdropped food, drinking water and medicine to Yingxiu. East of the
epicenter in the town of Hanwang, the smell of incense hung over a crowd of
sobbing relatives who walked among some 60 bodies wrapped in plastic, some
covered with tributes of branches or flowers. Nearby, rescuers carried more
bodies out of a makeshift morgue at the Dongqi sports arena. People from the
town and surrounding areas packed into blue tents provided by relief officials.
A Western-style clock tower in the town center had stopped at 2:27 — the time
the quake hit. The Mianzhu No. 3 Hospital was> obliterated, and the seven-story
main Hanwang Hospital collapsed. Surviving medical staff set up a triage center
in the driveway of a tire factory, but could only provide basic care. "The
first day hundreds of kids died when a school collapsed. The rest who came in
had serious injuries. There was so little we could do for them," said Zhao
Xiaoli, a nurse at Hanwang Hospital. Emergency vehicle sirens sounded every few
minutes. An ambulance drove in, delivering a man pulled from the rubble and
covered in dust. "There will be a lot more people. So many still haven't been
found," said Zhao. Disorienting episodes added to the struggle for survival in
much of the disaster zone. The Mianyang city government ordered its 700,000
residents to evacuate all buildings between 4 p.m. and 6 p.m. because an
aftershock was predicted. In Chengdu, water to some parts of the city was cut
for repairs, touching off a rumor that the supply was contaminated. People
began hoarding water> and water pressure citywide dropped before a senior
official went on TV to deny anything was wrong. > > >
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