Farming region devastaed,Thousands Pour Out Of Hills, Into Stadium
Simon
of devastated mountain villages in search of food and shelter
Thursday, transformed into homeless refugees by the violent earthquake
that ravaged central China on Monday.
More than 20,000 farmers and small-town shopkeepers, with children and
elderly in tow, filled the Jiu Zhou Sports Stadium in Mianyang, about
60 miles northeast of the provincial capital, Chengdu. Officials said
more were arriving by the hour as military rescue teams reopened roads
and homeless families made their way out of the badly damaged Beichuan
county hills just northeast of the epicenter.
One arrival, a lone woman with hair matted by dust and dark bruises
staining her cheeks, was led into the stadium by a nurse. The woman
looked straight ahead but seemed to see nothing, as if she were
sleepwalking. She limped on her left leg and her pants were caked with
the yellow dust of debris from a fallen building.
Nearby, families pushed on toward the main steps, carrying clothes in
plastic bags and looking for a place to sit. Their faces were also
vacant, strained from lack of sleep and the shock of what they had
endured over the last 72 hours.
Atop the steps, Jia Sushi, 26, sat alone, quietly weeping and looking
over the teeming entranceway. She had lost her husband soon after they
arrived Wednesday from Beidisi village, she said, and she had no idea
where to begin looking among the thousands of people milling about.
"Dang Hou, Dang Hou," shouted a young man walking through the crowd,
searching for another lost person.
The confusion in the stadium, jammed with people sitting on the ground
and surrounded by tents and tarps strung from trees, suggested the
formidable dimensions of the challenge facing the Chinese government
even after large-scale rescue operations are ended. Not only do the
homeless peasants have to be cared for in short-term refugee centers,
an official noted, but they also will have to get long-term help in
rebuilding their homes, schools and stores if the area is ever to
return to its traditional agriculture-based prosperity.
The government estimated that about 10 million people were directly
affected by the earthquake in some way across half a dozen provinces,
with Sichuan hit the hardest, according to the official New China News
Agency.
Beichuan county, which has a population of more than 160,000, mostly
farmers, lost an estimated 80 percent of its houses, officials told
the news agency. Beichuan city, its main center 30 miles northwest of
here, was largely reduced to rubble, with bodies still laid out in the
streets.
"The whole county has been destroyed," Gu Qinhui, a regional director
of the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent
Societies, told reporters in Beijing after a visit to Beichuan.
Gu said about 4 million homes were destroyed across the disaster
zone.
Convoys of relief equipment and supplies continued to push north from
Chengdu, some sponsored by the government and others organized by
business groups from around the country. The government ordered
another approximately 100 helicopters dispatched to the area to help
ferry supplies to isolated zones, the official news agency said.