Quake refugees living in an uninhabitable city

Kari Huus Reporter • Profile • E-mail

QINGCHUAN, China - After a winding six-hour drive through the mountains north of Chengdu, the road descends into a broad river valley, where the town of Qingchuan is nestled. In normal times, it must be scenic and peaceful, but on Saturday it is teeming with homeless refugees carrying bundles of belongings, military units moving supplies and people crawling through piles of rubble trying to salvage useable materials. Thousands of blue tents and makeshift shelters line the banks of the Sand River and dot the surrounding hills.

Qingchuan, a town of 30,000, was so badly shaken by the May 12 earthquake that 95 percent of the buildings in town — those that haven’t already been flattened — will have to be demolished, according to a government official.

As night falls on Qingchuan, traffic along the river front slows to a trickle. With electricity still out except at a few resettlement camps, people retreat to their shelters, some sitting around small fires.  The narrow main street of Qingchuan, lined with vacant four- to six-story buildings, becomes a long black corridor, lit up only when the occasional truck drives through. 

The one place that does remain a flurry of activity after dark is the courtyard of the Qingchuan government compound, where relief work and planning goes until late into the night. In a tent lit by a single bare bulb, about 20 people sit at a long table listening to a briefing on disease prevention. Other tents have lines of computers for Chinese journalists and government workers. Around the perimeter are the damaged government offices that once housed the government workers — including one building that has been torn down because it had become too dangerous. A path over this pile of rubble leads to a small outbuilding that houses some overburdened toilets.

Kari Huus / msnbc.com Government staffers work under a tent at the relief operations center in Qingchuan, China on Saturday.

All of this represents a lot of progress. All communication was cut off from the town for nearly two days after the quake, when the first rescue teams arrived. Since then, relief supplies have met the immediate needs of the refugees, but the emergency is far from over.

The worst hit places in Qingchuan county are villages like Donghekou, where at least 400 people died when landslides crushed it from both sides.  In total, officials say more than 4,300 people died and nearly 13,000 were injured in the county. An undetermined number of residents remain missing, and another 250,000 people are homeless, according a young government staffer named Xiang Zhichun.

‘We need another 70,000 tents’
“We need another 70,000 tents,” he said. “Just that number should give you an idea of how dire the situation really is.”

Beyond that, Qingchuan officials are concerned about that the relief lifeline — the road from Chengdu — could be cut off again by landslides triggered by aftershocks. Two other roads into the area were so badly damaged that there’s no prediction of when they will be opened, said Xiang.

“There are still aftershocks every day, and the rainy season is coming, so the (one remaining) road could be cut off again at any moment,” he said.

Officials also are concerned about 20 “quake lakes” that formed in this area when landslides blocked rivers. Troops are keeping a close eye on the lakes so they can warn refugees if one of the lakes threatens to burst through its banks and trigger flash flooding.

Reluctant to head back through the mountains in the dark, given the treacherous road conditions, we decide to stay. We are offered instant noodles with a display of hospitality that is both astonishing and embarrassing. We have food, we protest.

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