I’d say the chances of that happening are now 20%. There’s no official word from the tour sponsor, Ms. Ning of the North Atlanta High Chinese Department (who lives in Chengdu and whom we’re trying to accompany home) but right now I just don’t see it.
NPR got "lucky," in that their anchors were in Chengdu doing pre-Olympic prep when the earthquake hit. Their reports have been nothing short of heart-breaking. I try to imagine how I might feel if the quake had waited, say, 10 days, and I were, say, at the Airport (above) when this happened.
The Airport is quite far from the epicenter, according to Google Earth. The city is situated much like Denver, on a plain with the front ridge of the Himalayas running at a southwest-northeast angle, 60 miles away at the nearest point. It’s along this ridge that the quakes occurred, the giant 7.9 quake coming around 1:20 PM local time, when everyone was at work or school, and a long series of aftershocks continuing to this moment, most in the 5-6 range. (Note that the Richter scale is logarithmic — the first shock was 100 times more powerful than most aftershocks.)
What has most surprised me following the quake is how open the Chinese
government has been about it. My son, who has three years of Chinese
(one under Ms. Ning) wrote yesterday it would be foolish of us to offer
help to China, as the government would refuse it out of pride. That
turns out not to be the case. In fact, the government-run media is
covering the tragedy pretty honestly, and the government has asked for
the world’s aid.
This could be a turning point, a positive one. China has let the world
see its schools collapse while its office buildings stayed up.
Questions will be asked, both inside and outside the country. China has
shown its people living in tents, wandering about the countryside
seeking aid that doesn’t come. China has sent in paratroopers — would
that the Bush Administration had done so in New Orleans. Given our own recent record in disaster relief, I can’t condemn the Chinese government.
Consider also the scope of the disaster. Imagine 100 Katrinas, coming all at once, over the course of a horrifying 3 minutes, and you begin to comprehend. Imagine if an earthquake 10 times more powerful than the 1989 San Francisco tremblor struck, say, Denver, from deep underground, and the shocks were felt in Atlanta, in Seattle, in Chicago, and in Los Angeles.
Consider how many thousands of villages there are to Chengdu’s north, northeast, and northwest (the epicenter is about 60 miles due northwest), pancaked, roads heaved up, filled with boulders, totally inaccessible, blocked. Some villages were hit by landslides from both sides, and were literally buried alive.
There is no way even the scope of this devastation might be measured by the time we’re due to leave, and if we do go it will be a different mission. I’d like to know what U.S. medicines might be transportable — I’m thinking water purification tabs — and how they might be obtained.
If the government, or someone in-country with access to the Web, could provide some specifics on what’s most needed maybe we could help…it’s a drop in the bucket, but with enough drops you fill the bucket.
But that’s only a dream…most likely the trip will be quietly canceled, our money partly refunded, Ms. Ning sent on alone (she still hasn’t heard from her son, a student in Chengdu), tears shed and it’s all forgotten.
This remain Bush’s America. What might Obama’s America do?
