RFA Mandarin service Hong Kong-based reporter Lin Di reports from Dujiangyan, Sichuan province:
These forces are specialists in getting people out from under collapsed building, this officer says. They are usually stationed in Yunnan. They have been in Dujiangyan for three days. “There are forces here from Sichuan, Yunnan, and many other provinces,” he says. The bright lights are running off generators; they brought them along with them. There is no power at all in the city; only vehicle headlights.
In Dujiangyan, the stench of dead bodies fills the air. Most people here are wearing masks. I clamber over the rubble of a collapsed building that must have been four or five-storeys high. A rescue worker tells me that there are still more than a dozen bodies buried underneath the debris. “We checked,” he says. “They are all dead.”
One woman who lost a house which she had worked all her life to buy. “The house was only three-years-old and it collapsed. All the newer houses collapsed. The old ones are still standing…My sister is buried inside. She was visiting me from Chengdu, and she lost her life. She was only 31.”
“I am not a rich person,” she says. “The money I spent buying the house was my blood, sweat and tears.”
Around 9 p.m. in the evening, the crew recovers another body from under the rubble. It is that of an old man. They place it by the side of the road. The family gathers around it, crying.
Many local residents have voluntarily joined in relief work. “We live about 30 kilometers from here. Our town was also badly hit,” one man said. “But we sustained less damage than Dujiangyan. We put together a convoy of trucks and delivered bottled mineral water, milk, and bread to Dujiangyan. The donated food is worth around 20,000 yuan.”
An out-of-town rescue worker says: “The distribution of food was carried out in an orderly fashion. I was deeply moved. If a group of villagers already received water and food, they would tell us to find people with greater need.”
An officer/NCO giving a pep-talk to rescue workers, telling them to do their best to help the local government in the rescue mission.
Filed under: China, East Asia, Newsdesk, Sichuan, china_health, east_asia, governance, refugees, travel, yunnan | Tagged: china_quake, disaster_relief, dujiangyan, humanitarian assistance, Sichuan, sichuan_quake
