7.8 earthquake in China

As usual, you hit it right on the head, MM. We get numb to it. Not because we don't care, but because of the frequency of these, the back-to-back-to-back feel of it and a general sense of helplessness to affect change, improvements or aid.

 

Oh come on. It's not like that was the first story reported on. Not like that lead CNN.com right after the quake.

Pointing this out is like pointing to the news after Sept. 11 about games being canceled. The big news or not, it's still news and still something I wondered about, even if it was about 150th on the list of things I wondered about.

 

Pilot, I wondered the same thing but feared getting flamed by some board members here. It's a legit question, because life does indeed go on, even as we try to save and help all those we can.

 

Of course it's a legit news question.
But you just know there was some guy at 30 Rock yesterday, learning Chinese for 'Mr Costas needs an iced tea right now,' when he heard the news and choked on his takeout Thai, panicking that his Olympic trip would be cancelled.

 

No doubt.

 

Couple of things ... I just returned a couple of hours ago from two weeks in China.

I was nowhere close to the earthquake zone (Guangzhou/Canton is far from Chengdu/Chongqing, which were most affected by the quake).

A lot of the news we got was from the China Daily ... our hotel -- one that is primarily patronized by Americans -- had every one of the Chinese state-run TV channels *except* the English-speaking one. The CCTV news channel was providing round-the-clock coverage (unfortunately, I don't speak Mandarin, so it didn't do me a whole lot of good).

We did not feel the quake in Guangzhou. I thought of two things -- first, inland quakes are VERY bad because there is no water to absorb the energy (San Andreas/Pacific Rim quakes are often moderated by water and, while bad, a 5.0 in California isn't quite the same as a 5.0 in the Midwest). We had discussed earlier what could happen if the New Madrid fault ever *really* let loose (which it will do again sometime) ... this is the Asian equivalent of the New Madrid cutting loose. Sichuan Province is in the middle of the country, with Tibet to the west. It has some extremely heavily-populated urban areas (like most Chinese cities ... the population is staggering).

That, and urban Chinese (and even rural Chinese) live very, very closely together. In two weeks in China, in three different parts of the country, I never saw one single-family dwelling ... even rural farmers lived in apartment buildings. Many of the older apartment buildings were dirty and ranged from ramshackle (no windows) to functional (high-rise buildings, but you still wonder what the building codes might be ...).

China's population has grown so much so quickly, a lot of building had to take place at a rapid pace ... which could lead to corners being cut. In two of the three cities I visited, what looked like temporary housing was available in buildings that looked like American 1950s-era two-story motels/small apartment buildings, only without brick or limestone on the exterior ... other people lived in (pre-revolutionary) buildings that looked to be within a thread of falling down ... all were crowded.

What was really problematic was what the quake did to roads leading into the Sichuan quake zone. It is a mountainous area (close to Tibet) to begin with ... meaning access routes are few -- mountain passes, et al. Many of those roads were buckled/impassable, making aid virtually impossible to get to the remote areas.

Add in a massive natural disaster with a high population density living in substandard buildings, and things can get really scary really quick.

There were people in our travel group that had just left Chengdu and Chongqing three days before the quake, to meet us in Guangzhou. Needless to say, they were stunned a bit.

 

Chongquing is one of the biggest boom cities in China, I think. That's a very large city.

 

Maybe this will curtail some of their oil needs

 

We can do that.