16 Pages Number 72 2st Year
Vatican goes into damage control mode over abuse
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Thursday, April 15, 2010
This frame grab taken off Chinese state CCTV shows Chinese rescue workers searching through the rubble of collapsed buildings following a strong earthquake in Yushu County in northwest China’s Qinghai province on April 14, 2010. The death toll in the strong earthquake, which was measured by the US Geological Survey at a magnitude of 6.9, has risen to around 400, with another 8,000 injured, Chinese state media reported.
Bali Nine convicts propose judicial review PAGE 8
1913 Abraham Lincoln film found in NH barn cleanup PAGE 12 AFP PHOTO / HO / CCTV
Quake in western China kills 400, buries more Associated Press Writer
BEIJING – A series of strong earthquakes struck a far western Tibetan area of China on Wednesday, killing at least 400 people and injuring more than 10,000 as houses made of mud and wood collapsed, trapping many more, officials said.
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The largest quake was recorded by the U.S. Geological Survey as magnitude 6.9. In the aftermath, panicked people, many bleeding from their wounds, flooded the streets of a Qinghai province township where most of the homes had been flattened. Paramilitary police used shovels to dig through the rubble in the town, footage on state television showed. Officials said excavators were not available and with most of the roads leading to the nearest airport damaged, equipment and rescuers would have a hard time reaching the area. Downed phone lines, strong winds and frequent aftershocks also hindered rescue efforts, said Wu Yong, a local military chief. Workers were racing to release water from a reservoir in the disaster area where a crack had
formed after the quake to prevent a flood, according to the China Earthquake Administration. The Wednesday morning quake was centered on Yushu county, in the southern part of Qinghai, near Tibet, with a population of about 100,000, mostly herders and farmers. The USGS recorded six temblors in less than three hours, all but one registered 5.0 or higher. The China Earthquake Networks Center measured the largest quake’s magnitude at 7.1. The main quake sent residents fleeing as it toppled houses made of mud and wood, said Karsum Nyima, the Yushu county television station’s deputy head of news, speaking by phone with broadcaster CCTV. “In a flash, the houses went down. It was a terrible earthquake,”
he said. “In a small park, there is a Buddhist pagoda and the top of the pagoda fell off. ... Everybody is out on the streets, standing in front of their houses, trying to find their family members.” The death toll rose to about 400 by afternoon, according to CCTV. Emergency official Pubucairen, who goes by only one name, was quoted as saying that the number of injured has risen to more than 10,000. The earthquake comes a little less than two years after a magnitude-7.9 quake in neighboring Sichuan province left almost 90,000 people dead or missing. That quake flattened several schools, killing thousands of students. Poor design, shoddy construction and the lax enforcement of building codes were found to be rampant.
In Jiegu, a township 20 miles (30 kilometers) from the epicenter that appeared to be one of the worst hit, the local fire brigade was trying to rescue 20 students stuck inside a school, Kang Zifu, head of the rescue team, told state television. They were also working to pull out 40 to 50 people trapped in a toppled fourstory building, according to CCTV. It did not say what type of school it was. More than 85 percent of houses had collapsed in Jiegu, while large cracks have appeared on buildings still standing, the official Xinhua News Agency cited Zhuohuaxia, a local publicity official, as saying. “The streets in Jiegu are thronged with panic and full of injured people, with many of them bleeding from their injuries,” said Zhuohuaxia, who goes by one name. The provincial emergency office told Xinhua that 700 soldiers were trying to clear the rubble and rescue buried people and that 1,000 more troops would be dispatched. Continued on page 6