Qinghai Quake

I was sad to hear yesterday that China has endured another earthquake in its mountainous west. Thankfully, this quake appears to be nowhere near as devastating as the Sichuan quake in '08. Saying that, this is still a huge tragedy and a major disaster.

Over the past day or so, several people have asked me about the area that was hit. They asked if it was close to Xi'an and if Qian's family is OK. Qinghai is not at all close to Xi'an and Qian's family is fine.

I just did a quick search for some information about Yushu and Xining and found this video. It is pretty well done. (The embed doesn't seem to be working. You can view it here.)

Another topic we discussed at work was the amount of large-scale earthquakes that we've seen already in 2010. Is this all bad luck? What's going on with all of these quakes?

MSNBC addressed this in an article today:

As the numbers of buried or dead continue to climb from today's 6.9-magnitude earthquake in China, an event so close on the heels of the devastating Chile and Haiti earthquakes, you might wonder if Earth is shaking more lately. Perhaps, scientists say, but not unusually so.

Seismic activity may be higher in recent years than the long-term average, but it's still not out of the normal range, the experts contend.

"Relative to the 20-year period from the mid-1970's to the mid 1990's, the Earth has been more active over the past 15 or so years," said Stephen S. Gao, a geophysicist at Missouri University of Science & Technology. "We still do not know the reason for this yet. Could simply be the natural temporal variation of the stress field in the Earth's lithosphere." (The lithosphere is the outer solid part of the Earth.)

...

"What happens is when a lot of people get killed there's a lot of reporting of it, and if an equally big event occurs somewhere out in the middle of nowhere it doesn’t attract the attention," said G. Randy Keller, professor of geophysics at the University of Oklahoma.

...

If you look at it globally the occurrence of earthquakes is confined to zones we already know have earthquakes but it's a largely random process and so sometimes it's a little quieter than normal and sometimes it's a little more active than normal. But it doesn't mean anything, because on a global basis these things aren't connected," Keller said.

Read the Whole Article

Much of China is vulnerable to active fault lines and these kinds of quakes, as the article says, aren't surprising. In fact, the deadliest earthquake in the history of man took place in 1556AD near Xi'an in Shaanxi Province. The quake killed more than 800,000 people.

Chinese people certainly aren't "used to" earthquakes though. I remember the weeks and months after the Sichuan earthquake being a very tense time. People slept outside in tents, there were constant rumors of bigger quakes "working their way up from Sichuan Province towards Xi'an," and a general level of irrationality that I felt rivaled the weeks that followed 9/11/01 in the United States.

Let's hope that China as a whole handles this tragedy well and, more importantly, those who need help right now can get it.

Last Year's Massive Earthquake

Apparently last years Sichuan earthquake was a once in a lifetime phenomenon. Actually, it was a once every four millenia phenomenon.

From AFP:

PARIS — People who were killed, injured or bereaved in the 2008 Sichuan earthquake had the cruel misfortune to be victims of an event that probably occurs just once in four millennia, seismologists said on Sunday.

In a paper published in the journal Nature Geoscience, Shen Zhengkang of the China Earthquake Administration and colleagues said the May 12, 2008 quake comprised a strong seismic wave, unusual geology and the failure of three subterranean "barriers" to resist the shock.

Using Global Positioning System (GPS) markers and data from satellite-borne interferometric radar, the scientists built up a picture of the Longmen Shan fault, on the northwest rim of the Sichuan basin, as it was gouged open by the 7.9-magnitude temblor.

Nearly 88,000 people were killed in what was the largest seismic event in China in more than 50 years.

Read On

Not that it is any consolation for those that were affected, but hopefully nothing like this will happen again for another four thousand years.

Earthquake Anniversary

One year ago today, China suffered an unimaginable tragedy.



I remember May 12, 2008 clearly. Here is the post I wrote on my old blog one year ago:

Until I just read on the internet that the earthquake originated from Chengdu, I was sure that it had come from Xi'an or somewhere close to Xi'an in Shaanxi Province.

Jackie and I were in my apartment when we started hearing the closed windows banging like the wind outside was howling. A few seconds later my apartment building started swaying. Jackie and I ran to the bathroom of my apartment. I told her to stand in the door frame since I remember from early elementary school that that is the safest place to be in an building during an earthquake. My recently purchased coffee plunger in the kitchen fell off the counter and shattered. A few other things fell off my walls.

Things kind of calmed down but then started up again. We were walking around the apartment trying to find our shoes so we could go outside. At this time, it felt like walking on a cruise ship on a choppy sea. It wasn't like I was about to fall over, but I did kind of hold on to the walls to keep my bearings.

After the swaying had completely stopped, we walked down the five flights of stairs to the ground floor. I heard hordes of screaming children from the elementary school behind my apartment complex. The children's wailing made this descent down my stairwell a rather surreal experience.

Jackie and I went outside where a large group of people had already congregated. Everyone was frustratedly looking at their cell phones and trying to use them to no avail. The cell phone network had gone down. It was kind of strange to look at around at scores of people and not see anybody using a cell phone. In China in 2008, this is a rare site.

After fifteen minutes of standing around, we decided to go to the store to buy groceries for dinner tonight. Along our walk to the store there were people everywhere on the sidewalks. It appeared to me that the earthquake had turned into a makeshift siesta. People all seemed in good spirits as they demonstrated how they'd handled the tremors.

At that time, I really did not understand what had happened. I had never experienced an earthquake before. I was sure that the earthquake's epicenter had been in Xi'an. And seeing that everyone around me was OK, I didn't sense the death and destruction that had just occurred.

There had, in fact, been an unthinkable amount of horror.

From The Financial Times:

When the earthquake struck, Li Hong was sitting on the couch at home in the town of Beichuan, directly above the fault line.

Seven months pregnant with her second child, all she could think of was her six-year-old daughter in the town’s elementary school as the ground shook and she struggled to escape from her third-floor apartment.

Three days later, in hospital, she found an injured girl from her daughter’s class who escaped from the rubble of the school.

“I asked her if she had seen my daughter and she said the last time she saw her was when the earthquake struck and the children ran into the playground and my daughter was one step behind her,” Ms Li says, looking down at her nine-month-old son for comfort. “The girl said when she turned around, a hillside ­collapsed and buried the other children.”

One year after the devastating May 12 tremor that left nearly 90,000 people dead or missing, the affected areas of Sichuan are filled with such stories.

Read On

This disaster was a natural one. But the disaster has not been limited to the natural sphere. Click through on this FT article and read the whole thing and watch the video. Ugh.

Although this earthquake happened one year ago, it will continue to haunt people for years. If you are interested in donating money or getting involved with recovery in the affected areas, I suggest that you get in touch with the following charities: The Yellow River Soup Kitchen or The Library Project. Both of these organizations have done amazing things in earthquake affected areas and in western China in general.

One week to the minute after the earthquake happened at 2:28PM on May 19th, 2008, the entire country of China shut down for a few minutes to honor those lost in the previous week's earthquke. I happened to be in Xi'an's city center next to the Bell Tower when this happened. It was an incredibly moving experience.

Thankfully, someone standing a few feet away from me took a video while it was going on and posted it to YouKu. The video can be viewed here. Skip ahead to 4:00 into the video. It is intense.

The Sichuan earthquake's is going to be felt for generations.

Sichuan Baby Boom

China is coming up on a painful anniversary in a few days. With that day comes a wave of newly-born babies.

From The Los Angeles Times:

May 3, 2009 Reporting from Mianzhu, China -- Ten months and 25 days after he buried his only child, Luo Gang became a father again at a makeshift hospital cobbled out of aluminum trailers.

For weeks after his 11-year-old daughter was killed in last May's massive earthquake here in Sichuan province, his wife cried so uncontrollably that her family feared she might be having a breakdown.

"If you don't have another baby, my sister will be grieving her whole life," Luo said his brother-in-law advised him.

Luo said he was shocked by the tactlessness of the suggestion.

"We were in a bad way after the earthquake. My wife couldn't stop crying," recalled Luo, a 35-year-old welder, his eyes sunken deep with fatigue after a long night waiting for his wife to give birth to their son. He spoke outside the hospital room where his perfect little baby, born a few hours before, lay wrapped in bunting in a metal bassinet next to his mother, both sleeping contentedly.

"Now, we are better. A new life has been created to take the place of the one that was taken away."

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This article highlights a couple aspects why this tragedy is particularly hard for the Sichuanese:

Sichuan has long been a battleground over the policy, with the government strictly enforcing the one-child limit. (In many other parts of China, farmers can have a second child if the first is a girl, but not in Sichuan.)

Among Sichuan's predominantly rural population, most people have no retirement plans other than the long-ingrained Chinese tradition that children care for their elders.

"The earthquake very much highlights the vulnerability of the one-child policy," said Gu Baochang, a professor of demographics at People's University in Beijing.

"These people are not covered by any social security program. They rely completely on their children for elderly support. And it's not just money. Once they are old, without children they have no place in society."

The parents who now have the opportunity to remake their lives with new children must have such conflicting emotions.

How sad the affected areas of Sichuan must be.

There are so many circumstances about China and Sichuan Province that made last year's earthquake more devastating than it would've been elsewhere. It really is hard to see how many of the people whose lives were destroyed last year will be able to pick up the pieces and move forward.

I'll surely be highlighting and talking about more articles relating to last year's earthquake as May 12th approaches.

Earthquake Tourist Traps

China has found something to do with the land that was affected by the earthquake last May.

From AFP:

SHANGHAI (AFP) — Some of the ruins left by last year's massive earthquake in southwest China, including a collapsed school, will open to tourists later this month, state media reported Wednesday.

Tour groups will be able to go boating on a "quake lake" and visit a museum featuring an "earthquake simulation," the China Daily reported, citing officials in Beichuan county, where 80 percent of the buildings were levelled.

Local government spokesman Chen Wen said the one-day tour will include a visit to Beichuan High School, where students were buried in the rubble of collapsed buildings, the report said.

Chen said local officials created the tour in response to demand from people wanting to see tragic sites linked to the 8.0 magnitude quake that struck the province on May 12, the report said.

More than 200,000 people visited the area during China's week-long Lunar New Year holiday in January, Chen told the newspaper.

Around one in 10 of Beichuan county's 300,000 residents died in the quake, the newspaper said.

Read On

My gut reaction to this was that it is an incredibly morbid move by the Chinese. But the more I thought about it, the more I realized that a lot of tourist destinations around the world that I've been to are, in fact, sites of great tragedy.



When I visited Washington DC as a kid, I went to Ford's Theatre, the site where John Wilkes Booth assassinated President Abraham Lincoln.



When I visited Dallas as a teenager, I went to the Texas School Book Depository, the site where Lee Harvey Oswald assassinated President John F. Kennedy.



When I was in Europe studying abroad in college, I visited the Dachau Nazi Concentration Camp near Munich, Germany.



And while I've never been to New Orleans, "Hurricane Katrina tours" are now available to those who are interested.

Tragedy and disasters obviously have appeal to the masses. This is a very odd psychological phenomenon. I'm not sure what that says about us as humans.

Seeing the record the West has accumulated on these kinds of sites, I find it hard to rant against Chinese for also getting in on this disaster/tragedy tourism.

An Earthquake-Causing Dam?

The idea that last year's Sichuan earthquake was caused by the Zipingpu dam is an idea that seems to be picking up steam.

From The Associated Press:

BEIJING (AP) — Pressure from a dam, its reservoir's heavy waters weighing on geologic fault lines, may have helped trigger China's devastating earthquake last May, some scientists say, in a finding that suggests human activity played a role in the disaster.

The magnitude-7.9 quake in Sichuan province was China's worst in a generation, causing 70,000 deaths and leaving 5 million homeless. Just 550 yards (meters) from the fault line and 3.5 miles (5.5 kilometers) from the epicenter stands the 511-foot-high (156-meter-high) Zipingpu dam, the area's largest. The quake cracked Zipingpu, forcing the reservoir to be drained.

Fan Xiao, a chief engineer at the Sichuan Geology and Mineral Bureau, said Wednesday that the immense weight of Zipingpu's waters — 315 million tons — likely affected the timing and magnitude of the quake. Though earthquakes are not rare in the area, one of such magnitude had not occurred for thousands of years, Fan said.

"I'm not saying the earthquake would not have happened without the dam, but the presence of the massive Zipingpu dam may have changed the size or time of the quake, thus creating a more violent quake," Fan said in a telephone interview.

Seismologists recognize that large bodies of water may exert pressure on fault lines deep in the earth, leading to earthquakes. The pressure can push the sides of fault lines harder together, increasing friction, or cause the fault lines to slip apart.

Read On

The article later on quotes scientists who do not think that a dam could have "caused" the earthquake. Although they do concede that dams may have had something to do with the timing and intensity.

I can't see this controversy over the Sichuan earthquake being caused by a dam ever turning into an explosive issue. Although the dam was very near the epicenter of the quake, the cause and effect between dams and earthquakes seems to be conjecture. I'm not sure how one would ever prove such claims.

The scientist who is most convinced of the connection is doing everything he can to thwart the building of future dams though. China, for years, has been on a dam-building fix.

Despite any challenges from academics, I can't imagine China would stop building dams any time soon.

Freezing in Sichuan

I saw Dickens' "Christmas Carol" at a theater yesterday. It was very enjoyable. Dickens' timeless classic reminded me of the importance of remembering the people who are roughing it this holiday season.

This holiday season, there are many reasons why we should not forget the victims of China's earthquake earlier this year. Actually, about 3.6 million reasons.

From Reuters:

BEIJING, Dec 22 (Reuters) - Quake survivors living in prefabricated housing in China's mountainous Sichuan province need 3.6 million quilts and the same number of cotton-padded clothes to survive the winter, state media said on Monday.

More than 80,000 people were killed in the May 12 disaster, with millions now living in resettlement sites surrounded by the rubble of their old homes and facing a colder winter than normal.

"Weather experts have forecast that temperatures in the quake-hit areas will be 0.5 degree Celsius to 1 C lower than usual. The areas are likely to get more rain, snow and frost too," the China Daily said, quoting provincial government officials.

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If you would like to make a donation to an organization which helps China's staggering number of poor people, this is a really good organization I know of based out of Xi'an: The Yellow River Soup Kitchen.

The Quakes Keep Coming

China's tectonic plates still aren't finished rumbling.

From AFP:

BEIJING (AFP) — China deployed more than 8,000 soldiers and military reservists to help search and rescue efforts in the southwest Monday after a 6.2-magnitude earthquake that left 40 people dead, state press said.

The weekend quake, in a mountainous region spanning the Sichuan and Yunnan provinces, destroyed or damaged more than 392,000 homes and injured nearly 675 people, according to the Xinhua news agency.

Xinhua was quoting figures announced by the Ministry of Civil Affairs.

The China News Services said earlier Monday the military were rushed to the scene to beef up search and rescue efforts as more people were being located and pulled out from the rubble.

Some 2,000 troops, police and firefighters already in the area have rescued more than 130 injured victims from collapsed buildings since the quake struck on Saturday afternoon, it added.

Read On

Sichuan cannot catch a break this summer. So sad.

Jackie told me an interesting story the other day regarding the Sichuan earthquake in May and this summer's Olympic Games. A parent of one of her students told her that China's Olympic medal count had an unbelievable connection to the Sichuan earthquakes.

China won 51 gold medals, 21 silver medals, and 28 bronze medals. Now if you put those numbers together, you get 512128. Now if you manipulate that a bit, you get 5/12, 1:28. The parent told Jackie that this is the exact moment that the Sichuan earthquake hit this past May - May 12th at 1:28PM.

I was pretty shocked by this. What a truly incredible coincidence?!

I then told a friend of mine here in Xi'an this story. He responded, "No f'ing way!" We were at a computer and then Googled these numbers to check its validity.

The Olympic medal count for China was indeed correct.

We then checked out when exactly the Sichuan earthquake hit. I knew that it was May 12th. I then thought about the time: 1:28PM. After a quick search, we saw that the earthquake did not hit at 1:28PM China time. It hit at 2:28PM China time.

Disappointed, my friend and I agreed that this amazing coincidence, it turns out, it not that amazing. Still pretty interesting though.

If only one more Chinese man or woman could've won another silver medal! This would've been a truly great tribute/inspiration to the number obsessed and superstitious country that is China.