Zware aardbeving trof China

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China quake victims flee 'flood'
Bron: BBC News

There has been panic in the quake-hit Chinese city of Beichuan after a river nearby burst its bank sparking reports it could flood the entire city.

The BBC's Paul Danahar in Beichuan says there was a stampede as thousands of people fled to higher ground.

The whole city has been evacuated, forcing the suspension of all rescue efforts, our correspondent says.

Beichuan is close to the epicentre of Monday's devastating quake in which it is feared about 50,000 people died.

On Saturday the number of confirmed deaths rose to 28,881 and the Chinese authorities say that about five million people have been made homeless by the disaster.

Our correspondent in Beichuan says the city went from a scene of rescue and relief into mayhem.

"Everybody just ran - rescuers, army relief teams, medical workers and locals - and people who were in the process of being rescued had to be left behind.

"We were in the process of filming a man about to be pulled out after hours of digging and the rescue team had to abandon him and run."

Our correspondent has now returned to the heart of the city after the authorities said that though the river had burst its banks the city was not under threat from the water, but the majority of people are remaining on the surrounding hillsides.

"It is not surprising," our correspondent says. "This entire community has been shaken to its core, they are surrounded by unstable buildings which threaten to topple at any moment, and the people have been deeply traumatised by what has happened."

The Chinese government has organised a massive search and rescue effort, which has garnered some success.

On Saturday, 33 people were dug out of the rubble in Beichuan, China's official Xinhua news agency reported, they include a 52-year-old man who was pulled free after 117 hours buried in debris.

And in the hard-hit county of Wenchuan a German tourist was pulled from rubble having been buried for 114 hours.

Race against time

China's president has urged rescuers throughout the earthquake-struck province of Sichuan to race to save lives.

Visiting the south-western province, Hu Jintao said "time is pressing" during the effort's "most crucial phase".

"Although the time for the best chance of rescue, the first 72 hours after an earthquake, has passed, saving lives remains the top priority of our work," Mr Hu told distraught relatives of those still missing.

On Friday, Mr Hu toured Mianyang, one of the cities worst-hit by the 7.9-magnitude earthquake, where he viewed relief efforts and met rescue workers.

Correspondents say the Chinese president's presence in the region appears to reflect the level of government concern over the scale of the disaster.

Premier Wen Jiabao said the quake was the most destructive and widespread since the People's Republic was founded in 1949.

Its scale was greater than that of the Tangshan earthquake in 1976 which left 240,000 dead, he said.

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Drie dagen nationale rouw in China
Bron: NOS

China heeft drie dagen van nationale rouw afgekondigd om de tienduizenden slachtoffers van de aardbeving te herdenken. Vanaf morgen hangen op alle overheidsgebouwen de vlaggen halfstok. Er wordt rekening gehouden met zeker 50.000 doden.

President Hu Jintao heeft veel lof voor de buitenlandse hulp die is ontvangen na de aardbeving. Hij bedankt China's internationale vrienden en buitenlandse regeringen voor alle bijdragen.

In de stad Beichuan is het reddingswerk hervat. Gisteren verlieten hulpverleners de stad na geruchten over een dreigende overstroming.

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China declares national mourning
Bron: BBC News

China has announced three days of mourning for the tens of thousands of victims of Monday's earthquake.

It will begin with a three-minute silence at 1428 (0628 GMT), exactly a week after the quake struck the south-western Sichuan province.

The Olympic torch relay will also be suspended for three days.

The number of confirmed deaths has now risen to 32,477, but officials say the final toll may reach 50,000. More than 220,000 people have been injured.

Chinese President Hu Jintao has expressed gratitude for the international help with relief efforts following the magnitude 7.9 quake.

"I express heartfelt thanks to the foreign governments and international friends," Mr Hu was quoted as saying by the state-run Xinhua news agency.

Offers of help in the relief effort from home and abroad have now surpassed $860m (£440m), Chinese officials say.

The first aid supplied by the US has arrived, with an air force plane loaded with tents, lanterns and 15,000 meals landing in Sichuan's provincial capital, Chengdu.

However, a British rescue team standing by in Hong Kong is returning home after being refused permission to travel to the earthquake zone.

Rescue efforts have resumed in Beichuan, after the city was evacuated amid fears that it could be engulfed by a river bursting its banks.

The city, which lies near the epicentre of the quake, was reduced to ruins.

Aftershocks

Three giant pandas are missing from the Wolong Nature Reserve, Xinhua reports. All the pandas at the reserve were initially reported safe.

There are still stories of survivors being pulled from the rubble.

One man who was rescued on Sunday, Tang Xiong, had only had slight bruises and was conscious when he was rescued in Beichuan county 139 hours after the quake, Xinhua said.

A 53-year-old man was pulled from the rubble in the town of Yingxiu in Wenchuan county after surviving for 148 hours, state media said.

Rescue workers worked for eight hours to save him.

The region shuddered again as a strong aftershock - measured by the US Geological Survey at 6.0 - struck at 0108 on Sunday (1508 GMT Saturday).

There have been hundreds of aftershocks, some causing landslides. Rescue work has also been hampered by heavy rain in some areas.

The Chinese government has organised a massive search and rescue effort. It released figures on Saturday demonstrating the scale of the operation.

It said 220,109 people had been recorded injured, not just in Sichuan, but in Gansu, Shaanxi, Chongqing, Hubei, Henan, and Guizhou provinces.

It said some 181,460 tents, 220,000 quilts, and 170,000 cotton-padded garments had been despatched to the disaster zone.

More than 10,600 people are believed to be still trapped, Xinhua said, citing regional officials

Rescue teams from South Korea, Singapore and Russia have joined Japanese and Taiwanese experts taking part in the search.

The specialist teams are equipped with sniffer dogs, and fibre-optic cameras and heat sensors to detect people buried under the rubble.

But experts say the chances of finding people alive are diminishing.

Nuclear facilities in the affected area have been confirmed to be safe, the ministry of environmental protection's Nuclear Safety Department said, Xinhua has reported.

China has a research reactor, two nuclear fuel production sites and two nuclear weapon facilities in Sichuan, all between 60-145km (40-90 miles) from the epicentre, according to the French Institute for Radiological Protection and Nuclear Safety.

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Aardbeving China verwoest 5,5 miljoen gebouwen
PEKING (ANP) - De aardbeving die op 12 mei de Chinese provincie Sichuan trof heeft bijna 5,5 miljoen gebouwen verwoest. Dat meldde een regeringsfunctionaris vrijdag toen hij een gedetailleerd overzicht van de schade gaf.

Het aantal doden door een van de zwaarste aardbevingen in decennia is inmiddels opgelopen tot 55.239, aldus de vicegouverneur van Sichuna Li Chengyun. Bijna 25.000 mensen gelden als vermist. Ruim 280.000 personen raakten gewond.

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Zware naschok in China

CHENGDU/PEKING - Een zware naschok heeft zondag de Chinese provincie Sichuan opgeschrikt. De beving had een kracht van 6,4 op de schaal van Richter, volgens de plaatselijke autoriteiten in Sichuan. Bij deze hevige naschok vielen slachtoffers.

De staatstelevisie meldde een dode en circa vierhonderd gewonden.

De beving verwoestte voorts naar schatting 70.000 huizen die mogelijk door eerdere schokken waren verzwakt. Er waren meer dan negentig naschokken in het rampgebied in het zuidelijk deel van centraal China.

Doden

Door de zware aardbeving van maandag 12 mei vielen zeker 62.664 doden. De regering in Peking meldde zondag voorts dat er nog 23.775 mensen worden vermist.

Vrijdag werd nog een levende uit het puin bevrijd. Deze 80-jarige man had 266 uur of meer dan elf dagen in het puin bekneld gezeten.

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China Earthquake Was Rare Type

LiveScience.com Mon Jun 30, 12:46 PM ET

The major earthquake that devastated China last month was something of a seismological oddity, seismologists report in a new analysis. The faults that caused the temblor rarely rumble.

More than 69,000 people are confirmed to have died from the magnitude 7.9 quake that struck China's Sichuan province around noon on May 12, leveling school buildings and other poorly-constructed structures.

The earthquake was also a complete surprise to scientists. MIT seismologists who had been operating an array of 25 seismograph stations in the region for more than a year had found no hints that a large temblor might hit.

"Nobody was thinking there would be a major seismological event," in that area, said MIT's Leigh Royden. "This earthquake was quite unusual."

The region is extremely unusual geographically, Royden said, because of the very steep slopes at the boundary between the Sichuan Basin to the east and the Tibetan Plateau to the west. The elevation rises by more than two miles (about 3.5 kilometers) in a span of just 30 miles (50 kilometers).

The area is at the boundary between the Indian and Asian tectonic plates, which are engaged in an ongoing collision that has created the Himalayas and the Tibetan plateau.

In central and eastern Tibet, unlike most other areas where two continental plates are colliding, the movement of the crust is hidden. Instead of folding and faulting, the surface of the eastern Tibetan plateau is undeformed and being lifted upward by the thickening of a weak crustal layer more than 9 miles (15 km) below the surface.

The crust in this layer is flowing rapidly eastward away from central Tibet. But in the area where the earthquake occurred, it is obstructed by a major obstacle, the Sichuan Basin.

"The crust and mantle beneath the basin appears to form a hard, cold knot," Royden said, which forces the flow to "wrap around the knot." The huge elevation differences between the surface of the plateau and the Sichuan Basin provided the underlying stress that led to the quake, she added.

Similar events in the area occur only once in every 2,000 to 10,000 years on average, the researchers say, though they caution that because earthquakes can sometimes occur in clusters, residents and officials should still be wary of another possible large-scale earthquake.

The new analysis is detailed in the July issue of GSA Today, a publication of the Geological Society of America. The research was funded by the National Science Foundation.