Grieving and angry parents on Thursday marked one month since China’s devastating earthquake toppled schools, apologising to their loved ones buried under the rubble.
Muddy lake water from a dangerously unstable ”quake lake” rushed into the devastated Chinese town of Beichuan on Tuesday, covering about a third of the settlement where the water level was rising fast.
Chinese troops are carving a third drainage channel into the unstable dam holding back a big ”quake lake”, as water levels rise and aftershocks send more debris tumbling into the water, state media reported on Monday.
Optimism is flooding back to Beijing two months before the Olympics, with organisers eyeing success despite fears over pollution, security and the potential for more PR blunders.
Chinese officials have sent condolences and payments to parents of children killed in a school that crumpled in the country’s earthquake.
China’s unprecedented openness following last month’s earthquake is proving short-lived, as soldiers begin to cut off sensitive areas and as local media face growing reporting restrictions.
Chinese troops began easing pressure on a dangerously swollen ”quake lake” on Saturday, with water gushing into a man-made sluice in an operation monitored by satellite.
China readied on Friday to ease pressure on a swollen ”quake lake” threatening hundreds of thousands of people downstream in the southwestern province of Sichuan.
China, facing emergencies ranging from swollen lakes to rehousing millions after last month’s devastating earthquake, is looking to the future.
When last month’s Sichuan earthquake struck, Fan Meizhong was teaching a literature class at Guangya high school in the town of Dujiangyan. ”It’s an earthquake,” he shouted, before legging it out of the door.
Last month’s earthquake diverted world attention from China’s troubles in Tibet, but protests and arrests have continued in the region and the leadership has been girding for more trouble. Since the May 12 quake that killed about 70 000 people, more than 80 Buddhist nuns and a dozen monks have been detained.
China’s state media on Tuesday hailed Premier Wen Jiabao as the world’s sixth-most-popular politician on the social networking site Facebook — well ahead of United States President George Bush. Wen Jiabao’s profile was set up two days after he rushed to the scene of the May 12 earthquake in Sichuan province to oversee rescue efforts.
A New York-based human rights watchdog urged China on Tuesday to honour its commitment to improve its rights record before the Beijing Olympics by freeing some 130 Tiananmen-era prisoners. Human Rights Watch made the call on the eve of the 19th anniversary of the People’s Liberation Army’s crushing of student-led demonstrations.
Beijing promised on Tuesday to fight ambush advertising during the Olympic Games that threaten official sponsors, saying organised groups of spectators wearing competing brand logos would not be allowed. McDonald’s, Coca-Cola and other sponsors paid tens of millions of dollars to link their names with the Beijing Olympics.
Parents, grieving and angry at the deaths of their children under a collapsed school, kept a poignant vigil at the ruins of the building on Tuesday, demanding that those responsible be brought to justice. In the tiny farming town of Wufu, nearly every building withstood the May 12 earthquake — except the three-storey Fuxin Number Two Primary School.
Chinese medical teams have fanned out across the earthquake zone, disinfecting makeshift camps and educating survivors, and on Monday the Health Ministry said it could guarantee there would be no epidemics. Where bodies could not be cremated, they had been been buried deep underground and far from water sources to prevent contamination
Engineers have completed work to drain a lake formed by last month’s earthquake that had threatened to inundate towns downstream and add to the toll of China’s deadliest natural disaster in more than 30 years. Authorities have evacuated 197 000 people from areas at risk of flooding and drawn up contingency plans.
China was poised on Saturday to dynamite a dangerous ”quake lake” to drain its waters as 1,3-million people nearby were kept on alert for possible evacuation. Workers set explosives on a dam formed by this month’s catastrophic earthquake in Sichuan province, after thousands of soldiers finished an enormous drainage channel after 10 days of frantic digging.
Chinese troops racing to drain an ”earthquake lake” ahead of more forecast rain made substantial progress digging a diversion channel and have created emergency escape paths in case a mud and rock dam gives way. The landslide-blocked river in China’s Sichuan province is now the most pressing danger after an earthquake devastated the region on May 12.
The rescue of 40 half-starved people from a remote village 16 days after China’s earthquake provided a rare piece of good news on Thursday as rain threatened more misery for millions of survivors. A military helicopter plucked the villagers from their quake-shattered mountain homes on Wednesday.
A senior Chinese tourist official admitted on Wednesday that the storm of bad publicity surrounding China in the run-up to this summer’s Olympics could affect the number of foreign visitors to the Beijing Games. Southern China has been hit by freezing weather, there has been violent unrest in Tibet and now the huge earthquake in Sichuan.
China has evacuated more than 150 000 people living below a swollen lake formed by this month’s devastating earthquake amid fears it could burst and trigger massive flooding, state media said on Wednesday. Tokyo’s Jiji news agency said China had called on Japan to send its military to help with relief operations.
Troops armed with dynamite scrambled on Tuesday to blast through a huge wall of debris that is damming a rising quake lake in south-west China and putting more than a million people at risk. With the May 12 earthquake death toll already standing at more than 65 000, officials are desperate to avoid another disaster.
China was preparing to dynamite rock, mud and rubble forming a dangerously large ”quake lake” on Monday, hoping to avert a new disaster two weeks after a catastrophic tremor struck Sichuan province. The official estimate of dead from the May 12 earthquake is now more than 60Â 000, but that number is certain to grow.
A big aftershock rattled south-west China on Sunday killing at least one person and injuring 400 others, state media reported, nearly a fortnight after a big quake killed tens of thousands in the same area. More than 70Â 000 houses toppled during Sunday’s tremor in Sichuan province, state television reported. The 5,8 magnitude aftershock was epicentred 40km west-northwest of Guangyuan.
On a hillside above a collapsed middle school in Sichuan, biohazard workers in white suits scattered lime and sprayed disinfectant on hundreds of small, fresh graves, while two armed policemen stood watch. Then a backhoe scooped up fresh dirt and completely covered the graves with their small triangles of cinderblock or stone, the white flowers and offerings.
China has found what it termed 50 ”hazardous sources of radiation” due to last week’s earthquake, a senior official said on Friday, though he insisted the situation was under control. But Wu Xiaoqing, deputy environment minister, said there had been no accidental releases of radiation.
Soccer World Cup chief organiser Danny Jordaan condemned anti-immigrant violence in South Africa on Friday but said it would pass before the tournament takes place. ”Our standpoint is that this World Cup must be a celebration of Africa’s humanity,” he told the International Football Arena conference.
Record high oil prices at a barrel deepened worries about inflation on Thursday and weighed on some Asian stocks although Japanese shares ended slightly higher, as dealers trimmed their bets on further weakness. The dollar trudged higher against the euro after earlier hitting a one-month low after the Federal Reserve slashed its United States 2008 growth forecast
China stepped up the fight on Thursday to stave off disease among over five million earthquake homeless as it tried to boost morale with plans to bring the Olympic flame through the disaster zone. Ten days after the quake, China was faced with the challenge of how to reconstruct shattered communities after more than 74 000 people were confirmed dead or missing.
China vowed on Wednesday to deal severely with anyone found responsible for shoddy state building work, as parents demanded to know why last week’s quake destroyed so many schools, killing thousands of children. Nine days after the massive tremor hit the mountainous Sichuan province in south-western China, rescuers were still finding survivors.
China on Wednesday denied that a Chinese ship carrying arms to Zimbabwe had managed to get its cargo to the landlocked African nation, saying the ship and the weapons were on their way back to China. Zimbabwe would not comment at the weekend on reports that his government had finally taken delivery of a consignment of arms.