Ping's Report (4)

My dear friends,

I did experience this biggest aftershock at the scale
of 6.4 yesterday in Chengdu right at home this Sunday.
To me, it's not something scary. But everyone here ran
out of the building rather quickly. By the time my
father and i got downstairs (my mom was in Beijng for
business trip), there're already a lot of people got
out of their buildings and talking loudly about this
scary experience.

Started from a few days ago, Chinese government paired
up provinces with damaged counties, one province match
with one county -- providing one to one disaster
relief assistance, total 21 provinces involved.

On Saturday, there're total 34 artificial lakes which
were formed from huge rocks and soil broken off of
near by mountains. They blocked the normal flow of the
previous rivers and formed those artificial lakes.
They're dangerous to have, because the water level
keeps raising in the lake, and it can break off or
over flowed easily and affect the regions down the
streams.

Last Saturday, Chinese government were discussing how
to solve the problem. There're three possibilities:
1. Release the water, keep the its level low in the
lake. Prevent over flow.
2. Re-enforce the rocks and soil to block the water.
3. Remove people who live down the stream to safe
areas.

Government chose #1 & #3.

But it's not an easy task at all. How to transport
heavy machineries to the area? It's impossible to go
by through land. It left only possibility to get there
by helicopters. To lift 800 ton weight excavator, they
need to use the biggest helicopter in the world --
Russian made M 26. But it's impossible for human to
stand still within certain range close to an operating
helicopter. So, how to untie the cords which are used
to tie the machine?... Plus, it's very difficult to
land on the small area which is formed by broken off
rocks etc... Because it's in the mountain area, the
weather condition changes easily. They need
professional meteorologist to give them accurate
weather condition report to guide the helicopters...

As the water level of artificial lakes keep raising,
and there's another heavy rain in a few days, there're
not many days left for operation. They have to get the
digging & releasing work done before the rain arrives.

Those info was on Sat. But up to today, there're
already 20 excavators sent to the area, and they
expect to finish digging in 10 days. See website below
for photos:


http://news.cdqss.com/html/2008-05/27/content_71347.htm


Also, check those photos as their names stated what
they are.

On this Monday, I went to one of the disaster area
called An Xian (county). Every government official
slept no more than 3 hours every night since disaster
hit. At night, they sleep in the cars, during the day,
they work at the tents -- their temporary offices. If
they want to take a shower, they have to take risk go
back to their previous homes, and quickly run out
after done.

There're some original photos taken in An Xian -- you
can still see some broken houses, and the terrible
tents people built themselves.

Sorry, I will have to attach them tomorrow morning.
The book bar is closing. sorry about it.

Thanks for reading