Salon.com > Gillian Wong

180 killed, 11,000 injured in Chinese earthquake

Mon, 22 Apr 2013 11:55:00 +0000

YA'AN, China (AP) — Rescuers and relief teams struggled to rush supplies into the rural hills of China's Sichuan province Sunday after an earthquake left at least 180 people dead and more than 11,000 injured and prompted frightened survivors to spend a night in cars, tents and makeshift shelters.

The earthquake Saturday morning triggered landslides that cut off roads and disrupted phone and power connections in mountainous Lushan county, in Sichuan's Ya'an city area, which is further south on the same fault line where a devastating quake wreaked widespread damage across the region five years ago.

Hardest hit were villages further up the valleys, where farmers grow rice, vegetables and corn on terraced plots. Rescuers hiked into neighboring Baoxing county after its roads were cut off, reaching it overnight, state media reported. In Longmen village, authorities said nearly all the buildings had been destroyed in a frightening minute-long shaking by the quake.

In the fog-covered town of Shuangli, corn farmer Zheng Xianlan said Sunday that she had rushed from the fields back to her home when the quake struck, and cried when she saw that the roof collapsed. She then spent the night outdoors on a worn sofa using a plastic raincoat for cover.

Tibetan monk sets self on fire in China, dies

Thu, 17 Mar 2011 16:53:00 +0000

A Tibetan monk in western China set himself on fire in an anti-government protest, then was beaten and kicked by police, prompting hundreds of monks and others to rally, an exiled Tibetan monk said. A state news agency said the monk died Thursday.

The 21-year-old monk, Phuntsog, who like many Tibetans goes by only one name, set himself on fire Wednesday afternoon on a main street near the Kirti monastery in Aba town, in Sichuan province, said Kusho Tsering, a monk now living in Dharmsala, India.

The official Xinhua News Agency cited an unidentified county government spokesman as saying the monk died early Thursday, more than 10 hours after the self-immolation, because monks refused to let police take him to a hospital.

The exile's account highlights simmering tensions in Tibet and Tibetan-inhabited regions in western China amid several anniversaries this month, including the March 10 anniversary of the unsuccessful revolt against China that caused the Dalai Lama to flee in 1959. Aba county has for years been the scene of large protests involving hundreds of monks and citizens.

Doctors remove rusty knife from man’s head after 4 years

Fri, 18 Feb 2011 17:49:00 +0000

Surgeons in southern China successfully removed a rusty, 4-inch (10-centimeter) knife from the skull of a man who said it had been stuck in there for four years, the hospital said Friday.

Li Fuyan, 30, had been suffering from severe headaches, bad breath and breathing difficulties but never knew the cause of his discomfort, said the senior official at the Yuxi City People's Hospital in Yunnan Province.

Li told doctors he had been stabbed in the lower right jaw by a robber four years ago and the blade broke off inside his head without anyone realizing it, said the director of the hospital's Communist Party committee's office who would only give his surname, He.

Surgeons worked cautiously to remove the badly-corroded blade without shattering it, He said. The hospital's website also reported the successful surgery.

The case, which one of the doctors described as a "miracle," has been widely covered by the Chinese media and discussed on the Internet.

"We checked his mouth, but no wound or scar has been found. It is very strange as to how the blade got into his head," Xu Wen, deputy director of the hospital's stomatology department, told state broadcaster CCTV.

Quake in western China kills 400, buries more

Wed, 14 Apr 2010 13:09:00 +0000

A series of strong earthquakes struck a mountainous Tibetan area of western China on Wednesday, killing at least 400 people and injuring more than 10,000 as houses made of mud and wood collapsed, officials said. Many more people were trapped and the toll was expected to rise.

The largest quake was recorded by the U.S. Geological Survey as magnitude 6.9. In the aftermath, panicked people, many bleeding from their wounds, flooded the streets of a Qinghai province township where most of the homes had been flattened. Students were reportedly buried inside several damaged schools.

Paramilitary police used shovels to dig through the rubble in the town, footage on state television showed. Officials said excavators were not available and with most of the roads leading to the nearest airport damaged, equipment and rescuers would have a hard time reaching the area. Hospitals were overwhelmed, many lacking even the most basic supplies, and doctors were in short supply.

Downed phone lines, strong winds and frequent aftershocks also hindered rescue efforts, said Wu Yong, commander of the local army garrison, who said the death toll "may rise further as lots of houses collapsed."

“Miracle” in China: 115 trapped miners rescued

Mon, 05 Apr 2010 12:49:00 +0000

More than 100 Chinese miners were pulled out alive Monday after being trapped for over a week in a flooded coal mine, where some ate sawdust and strapped themselves to the shafts' walls with their belts to avoid drowning while they slept.

Rescued miners wrapped in blankets, some with their light-sensitive eyes covered but their feet bare, were hurried to waiting ambulances that sped wailing to nearby hospitals. One clapped on his stretcher and reached out his blackened hands to grasp those of rescuers on either side.

Rescuers in tears hugged each other at the scene, which was broadcast live on national television. The sudden surge in rescues was a rare piece of good news for China's mining industry, the deadliest in the world. A rescue spokesman said 115 survivors had been pulled out as of 4:30 p.m. local time (0830 GMT; 4:30 a.m. EDT).

"A miracle has finally happened," Liu Dezheng told reporters Monday morning, after the first nine miners were taken out shortly after midnight. "We believe that more miracles will happen."

Of the 153 initially trapped, there are still 38 miners in the shaft. Rescuers expressed confidence Monday they could be saved but did not say whether there had been any contact with them.

China kept tainted milk secret

Thu, 07 Jan 2010 14:18:18 +0000

Chinese authorities kept concerns about the safety of a Shanghai dairy's products secret for nearly a year before announcing last week that the company had been shut for manufacturing contaminated milk, an official said Thursday.

The delay in notifying the public about the tainted products raises questions about the effectiveness of China's efforts to restore confidence in its food industry after several safety scandals in recent years -- including one involving contaminated milk -- that exposed serious flaws in monitoring the nation's food supply.

Food safety authorities in Shanghai found contamination in Shanghai Panda Dairy Co. Ltd.'s products last February and started investigations immediately, an official from a district prosecutor's office said. Chinese authorities said the dairy was one of 22 that produced tainted milk in 2008.

They detained three executives in April, but Shanghai's food safety bureau first told the public of the problem only last week when it shut the dairy.

The bureau said the dairy was selling milk powder and condensed milk tainted with the industrial chemical melamine, which can cause kidney stones and kidney failure.