Chinese President Hu Jintao flew to remote and ruined Yushu county to speed relief distribution on Sunday, as Tibetan monks cremated victims of an earthquake that killed nearly 1,500.
Hu cut short a visit to South America to fly to the disaster area. The Tibetan spiritual leader Dalai Lama on Saturday asked Beijing if he could visit the site to comfort the victims. He has not returned to China since fleeing Tibet in 1959 after a failed uprising, and is unlikely to get permission to go.
Hundreds of military trucks, joined by relief convoys organised by private aid groups, rolled across the 1,000 kms (600 miles) from the provincial capital to Gyegu, the county seat, where survivors are increasingly desperate for food and shelter.
In Tuanjie village, outside Gyegu, relief workers distributed blankets at the local monastery, but said the high altitude is limiting their ability to fly in food.
"We have never had such a big earthquake before so this is completely unexpected for us and we were not prepared," said He Zhanlu, team leader for aid distribution in the village. "To add to this, aid from all over the country is coming to us now, so traffic conditions on the road is a logistical problem."
Some non-government organisations have set up distribution entries outside Gyegu to avoid looting and fights over food that have occurred in the town.
Family members brought more wrapped bodies to hundreds of chanting monks. The monks, many of whom came on pickup trucks from other Tibetan regions, estimate they have cremated more than 1,000 bodies on a grassy hillside outside Gyegu.
The sheer number has forced them to abandon traditional "sky burials", in which the dead are left for vultures to eat.
SCAVANGING
Residents and rescue teams picked through the wreckage of collapsed homes, looking for any dead and for bits and pieces to make life living in tents or in cold outdoors a little easier.
"Our first problem is that there aren't enough tents, and too many of the ones that are arriving are going to people with influence," said Dongzhu, an ethnic Tibetan who was scouring the remnants of his collapsed home on Saturday for anything usable.
The harsh conditions on the Tibetan plateau -- Gyegu is about 4,000 metres (13,000 feet) above sea level -- where temperatures are below freezing at night and strong winds blow constantly, mean reconstruction is urgent.
"When winter comes here, it's very, very cold and windy too," Dongzhu said. "I can't imagine what it would be like to be living in a little tent when winter comes."
Donations from provinces have reached 225 million yuan ($32.97 million), Zuo Ming, an official at the Ministry of Civil Affairs said on Sunday.
"At the moment, the supplies that have been sent are enough to ensure people there have shelter, food and water. Of course, there are shortages, and a lot of supplies are still in transit," he told reporters.
Tibetan students in regional cities have volunteered to translate at hospitals, where patients are unable to communicate with Chinese doctors, the Xinhua news agency said.
Dongzhu's family was sleeping outdoors in their courtyard in near-freezing nights, surrounded by Buddhist statues and other recovered items.
"There's absolutely no way that the families around here could afford to pay for new homes themselves, and after this we will want quake-resistant homes," said Dongzhu, a retired local official in his sixties.
Many local families make a few thousand yuan a year from small business, itinerant labour or herding yaks and goats.
No comments:
Post a Comment