Mandarin service reporter Lin Di arrived in Chongqing on Tuesday, the day after the earthquake. Even though the authorities said that the airport in Chengdu was supposed to be open, several flights going there were delayed and eventually cancelled. Lin Di had to rebook a flight for Chongqing instead. He arrived in Chongqing in the middle of the night on Tuesday. According to local authorities, as of 2:00 p.m. on Tuesday, May 13, in Chongqing, 11 people have died in the earthquake and 34 people sustained serious injuries, 118,000 people have been evacuated, and more than two million people in the city have been affected.
One local resident, a woman, described the May 12 earthquake: “All of a sudden I felt dizzy. Things on the table started flying all over the place. Our house is a one-storey structure. I was sitting in the sofa and having a meal. And I felt dizzy. I thought, how strange… I looked over at my bed. It was shaking. And the door was shaking. It was not even windy. How come the door was shaking? I ran outside. My neighbors were already out on the street. They yelled, ‘It’s an earthquake! Run! Hurry!’ So we all started to run. Things were shaking for about one minute.”
Aftershocks have been occurring with a high frequency. Another local resident, a man, said: “There have been many aftershocks. There was one around 10:30 tonight, and another one around 11:00. But the aftershocks today have not been as violent as the ones yesterday. The ones yesterday were pretty scary. We all ran out the door yesterday when the aftershocks occurred. There were so many people on the streets that the traffic stopped. We were so scared. We thought the building was going to collapse.”
Filed under: China, East Asia, Newsdesk, Sichuan, east_asia, governance, refugees | Tagged: chengdu, china_earthquake, chongqing, Sichuan, sichuan_quake
