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Huge Earth Quake hits China

May all the souls of the Chinese people who lost their precious lives in this disastor rest in peace. May God be with them. Our Nation n all the rest of the Nations around the world are deeply saddened by this disastor.

May God be with them ? Why would God be with someone who does not believe in her or his existence ?

:coffee:
 
Friends,

Just some updates from what I got via internet and bloggers. Referring to the following BBC map:

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Chinese PM is in the rescue scene of Dujiangyan, about 20km from the epicenter. It is raining there. 300 students are still under debris. Rescue work is difficult, because roads are still blocked. The PM himself also gets slightly injured due to slippery ground.

Personals and materials can’t move into Wenchuan City via roads at all. Rescue materials are parachuted into the area. PLA has been ordered to move into Wenchuan regardless and with any costs. Airports can’t be used yet. PLA paratroops are dispatched. The PM mobilized officers before departure: those people have nurtured you, and you should know what to do for them.

About 100,000 people are still trapped in Pengzhou City (not in the map). Many more are estimated in other remote areas.

Terrain is in bad condition… Mud floods are imminent in many areas… Aftershocks keep coming. Bridges can’t be easily built...

Unfortunate children: (warning: graphic content)
http://sz.photo.store.qq.com/rurl2=...7ef6b947a422c7c5a411f83e51488bea20f602fe079c8

Tearing... :cry:
 
It is indeed a sad incident. May the souls of the dead ones rest in peace. My sincere condolences to all those who have lost a dear one.
 
Thank Pakistan brothers and all the kind-hearted friend in the world for the concerning,My house was nearly 2000km from the epicenter,but I still fill the quake,so horrible that beyond my imagine,now over 12000 people lost their life,and more than 90000 were burried.all I have to do is donating and praying for them.:cry:
 
Thank all the freinds of pakistan and any other countries!
Chinese and their PLA will do their best to minimize the lost and win this battle with disaster!
 
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click to read the special bulletin

China quake deaths estimated over 50,000 in Sichuan alone, 19,509 deaths confirmed

CHENGDU, May 15 (Xinhua) -- More than 50,000 people are feared dead in southwest China's Sichuan Province alone after Monday's earthquake, the rescue headquarters of the State Council said Thursday.

The 7.8-magnitude earthquake that struck Wenchuan County, about159 km northwest of the provincial capital of Chengdu, has severely affected an area of more than 100,000 square km, according to the rescue headquarters headed by Premier Wen Jiabao.

The confirmed death toll in Sichuan was 19,509 by 4 p.m. Thursday, up by 5,046 from Wednesday's 14,463, Li Chengyun, vice provincial governor of Sichuan told a press conference.

Another 102,103 people were injured and 12,300 buried in the rubble, he said.

Rescuers have pulled 13,400 people alive out of the debris, he said.

The Sichuan provincial government has handed over 670 million yuan (95.7 million U.S. dollars) for disaster relief efforts to quake-hit areas.

More than 100,000 People's Liberation Army (PLA) soldiers and armed police, 1,235 medical teams, local officials and volunteers were racing the clock for rescue and relief operations.

It was the worst earthquake to strike China since the Tangshan earthquake in northern Hebei Province in 1976, which claimed 242,000 lives.

The tremors were also felt in most parts of the country.

In regions neighboring Sichuan, 280 were killed in Gansu Province, 106 in Shaanxi Province, 14 in Chongqing Municipality, two in Henan Province, one in Yunnan Province and one in Hubei Province.

China quake deaths estimated over 50,000 in Sichuan alone, 19,509 deaths confirmed_English_Xinhua
 
Pakistan sends relief goods to China

Updated at: 1014 PST, Friday, May 16, 2008
ISLAMABAD: On the instructions of Prime Minister, National Disaster Management Authority has arranged to dispatch a C-130 flight containing relief goods for earthquake affected people of China.

The relief goods include tents, blankets, plastic mats, medicines and mineral water. The flight carrying the relief goods departed for China on Friday morning.

Federal Minister Nazar Muhammad Gondal and Chinese ambassador have see off the flight.

The President and the Prime Minister of Pakistan have already visited Chinese Embassy in Islamabad to express condolence and solidarity with the affected families and Chinese government.
 
China quake left over 4.8 million homeless


BEIJING, May 16: More than 4.8 million people have been left homeless in China’s south-western Sichuan province by the recent earthquake, a senior local official said on Friday.

A total of 4,807,200 people have been forced into “temporary shelter” in the province, Li Chengyun, the vice-governor of Sichuan, told a news conference.

More than 50,000 people are estimated to have died in Monday’s 7.9-magnitude earthquake, China’s deadliest natural disaster in a generation.

The structures that have been left standing have seen overflowing crowds of survivors, with some people forced to stay outside for lack of space.

The extent of the homeless problem became known only on Friday, a provincial official said.

“Before today, communications and roads to some cities and counties in the province were cut off because of the quake,” the official told AFP on condition of anonymity.

“That’s why the number has increased so fast now that links have been restored with the cities and counties,” he said.

Meanwhile, rescuers in Beichuan county pulled 33 people alive from the rubble on Friday, four days after a major earthquake struck China as emergency workers hoped for “more miracles,” state media said.

A child was found by rescuers as they scoured through the rubble of a middle school in the quake-devastated town of Beichuan, according to the Xinhua news agency.

The report said rescuers could hear more voices calling for help and were “expecting more miracles.” “The possibility is very great that we can rescue the buried,” a rescue worker was quoted as saying. “Giving up is excluded from our dictionary.”—AFP

China quake left over 4.8 million homeless -DAWN - Top Stories; May 17, 2008
 
Western experts monitor China's nuclear sites for signs of damage

By William J. Broad Published: May 16, 2008

China's main centers for designing, making and storing nuclear arms lie in the shattered earthquake zone, leading Western experts to look for signs of any damage that might allow radioactivity to escape.

A senior federal official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the delicacy of the issue, said the United States was using spy satellites and other means to try to monitor the sprawling nuclear plants. "There appear to be no immediate concerns," the official said.

Nonetheless, "it's potentially a serious issue," Hans Kristensen, a nuclear arms expert at the Federation of American Scientists, a private group in Washington, said in an interview. "Radioactive materials could be released if there's damage."

China began building the plants in the 1960s, calculating that their remote locations would make them less vulnerable to enemy attack.

China's main complex for making nuclear warhead fuel, codenamed Plant 821, is beside a river in a hilly, forested part of the earthquake zone. It is some 15 miles northwest of Guangyuan in Sichuan Province. The vast site holds China's largest production reactor and factories that mine its spent fuel for plutonium — the main ingredient for modern nuclear arms.

Jeffrey Lewis, an arms control specialist at the New America Foundation, a nonprofit research group in Washington, said the military buildings that make up Plant 821 were probably unusually strong compared with civilian structures.

"I'd rather have been in the reactor building than a grade school" on Monday when the quake struck, he said. The site's various plants "were built as military facilities, and so I wouldn't be surprised if, by and large, they came through pretty well," he added.

Plutonium is a radioactive toxin that can be made into compact nuclear arms that are relatively easy to deliver. For a given size of nuclear blast, plutonium weapons are smaller and lighter than those made of uranium, the other main material used as fuel for nuclear warheads.

It is unclear if the plutonium-production reactor at Plant 821 has operated recently. Kristensen of the Federation of American Scientists said China was expanding its nuclear forces to 240 warheads in its overall stockpile from around 200.

Reactors are usually rigged to shut down in an earthquake, and it is unclear if the Plant 821 reactor could undergo the same kind of disaster that struck the Chernobyl reactor in 1986. It spewed radioactivity across large parts of Russia and Europe.

"From what I know, they're a really brilliant people and I think they do things the right way," said Danny Stillman, a former director of intelligence at Los Alamos National Laboratory and an expert on the Chinese nuclear program because of extensive travels in the 1990s to its secretive sites and bases.

Closer to the epicenter of the quake that struck Monday is Mianyang, a science city whose outskirts house the primary laboratory for the design of Chinese nuclear arms. It is considered the Chinese equal to Los Alamos. Known as the Chinese Academy of Engineering Physics, it too, Stillman said, houses a reactor, though a smaller one meant for research.

In China, the academy leads in the research, development and testing of nuclear weapons and has centers throughout Sichuan Province.

"I think this is not a no-cost moment for their labs but is not necessarily a human health risk," Lewis of the New America Foundation, who visited Mianyang last summer, said of the academy's main facilities. "We should keep in mind that there is certainly stuff out in the hills that might have been more seriously damaged."

North of the city, for example, is a plant that shapes plutonium into the compact spheres that ignite nuclear weapons.

Nuclear experts said that closer to the epicenter of the earthquake, in rugged hills a two-hour drive west of Mianyang, China runs a highly secretive center that houses a prompt-burst reactor. It mimics the rush of speeding subatomic particles that an exploding atom bomb spews out in its first microseconds.

North in an even more rugged and inaccessible region, nuclear experts said, China maintains a hidden complex of large tunnels in the side of a mountain where it stores nuclear arms.

"It's very close to the epicenter," said one specialist, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because, to the best of his knowledge, the exact location of the secret complex had never been publicly disclosed.

Stillman, the former intelligence chief at Los Alamos, said he had immense regard for the Chinese weapons scientists and assumed that many of their nuclear plants had been built to ride out the pounding of an earthquake or other disasters, natural or man-made.

"All the Chinese I met in the program were really brilliant," he said. "So I think they do it the right way. I hope."
 
Just wondering if JF-17, J10 manufacturing facilities will be affected by the quake...
 
not likely, the quake-hit areas are around the northwest and north of Sichuan, exactly at the edge of the Sichuan basin, and distinctly the seismic belt as well.

CAC is located inside the basin, southwest of Chendu. it's also effected in the waves but far from damage.
 
not likely, the quake-hit areas are around the northwest and north of Sichuan, exactly at the edge of the Sichuan basin, and distinctly the seismic belt as well.

CAC is located inside the basin, southwest of Chendu. it's also effected in the waves but far from damage.

this is indeed good news! - jane's defence was also speculatating on this topic - damage to chinese aviation industry.
 

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