Earthquake Summary #2

Three days after the earthquake here in SiChuan, I started to feel that the fear among the residents of ChengDu was beginning to exceed what the ongoing threat justified. The aftershocks during the second night were very slight, but many people continued to camp outside on the third night, primarily due to fears that aftershocks would lead to building collapses, (though some were people that had migrated into ChengDu from harder hit areas.) These fears were partially fueled by rumors that circulated via text message on the third day that there would be powerful aftershocks that night. These are not the only rumors that have been circulating. On the second day there was a rumor that two chemical plants near DuJiangYan had exploded, poisoning ChengDu's water supply. The rumor that the city's water was going to be cut off in a matter of hours prompted huge public distress and commotion. People crowded and pushed into every available store and bought up all of the water for sale. They did leave most of the Gatorade and apple juice however, and I bought a few bottles just in case. Later in the afternoon, China Mobile customers like myself received a text message from the Disaster Relief Bureau discrediting the rumor. The Disaster Relief Bureau has been helpful in passing along information via text messaging, letting me know when gas service in the city was going to be resumed, and informing me when each of the the provincial motorways had been fixed and reopened. However, it is impossible to keep up with the speed of the rumor mill.

To the North of ChengDu, where one of my friends attends a music university, students and teachers have been fleeing from the campus because of a rumor that SiChuan is going to be quarantined because of the outbreak of some untreatable illness. The rumor is that travel in and out of SiChuan is going to be shut down immediately, the implication being that we will all be left to face certain demise, I suppose. I have yet to see any reliable information regarding this rumor, but Im quite sure it is groundless.

That was my feeling after three days. The paranoia lingering around the city was frustrating because it slowed everything down, but understandable considering how deeply the discovery our seismological complacency had effected people, and even strangely touching when it resulted in my friends bombarding me with messages of concern. I started writing a 2nd earthquake update to send to my friends and family at home but after typing- "for the most part none of the people in the city of ChengDu experienced much real danger," I ran out of things to say and put the email aside." The next day my buddy Leif from Atlanta came to ChengDu, and I was prepared for the situation in ChengDu to continue its gradual slide back towards normality. Yesterday was a step in the other direction however.

I got a call from a Chinese friend of mine at about 730pm asking me to come to ChengDu's central (TianFu) square at 8 to assist in a project to collect candles for the victims of the earthquake. I was a bit confused about the purpose, but Leif and I showed up anyway with plastic bags in hand ready to help. There were about 10,000 people in the square. That is a total guess, but needless to say, the 88368 square meters of the park were thronged packs of Chinese people enthusiastically chanting and waving flags. It looked something like this: http://youtube.com/watch?v=pvUUlNHC0A4&feature=related , though that video was taken at three in the afternoon, at the ceremony marking the beginning of the a three day period of morning (Leif and I had wondered about the reasons for the sirens we had heard), and the atmosphere in the evening was much less restrained. The ocean of pumping fists overlooked by the 25 foot Mao statue at the edge of the square would surely have seemed an ominous sight for many Americans who fear China's accent to global superpower status, but despite the nationalistic undertones of the gathering, the mood remained cordial. One Chinese girl approached Leif, and after ascertaining that he was from America said, in impeccable English "I cant tell you how moving it is for me to have you here with us during this special time."

Amidst the chanting crowd, there was any army of volunteers working frantically to collect the discarded candles and candle wax puddling on the ground in plastic bags. I do not understand whether the collected wax was to be recycled and used to aid the victims of the quake somehow, or if it was simply an effort to keep the stone floor of the square clean, but I do know that my friend was yelling into her walky talky when I found her and we were quickly dispatched to a corner of the square where we got down on our knees and using keys and ID cards scraped wax with the single-minded earnestness that comes with participating in something much larger than yourself.

After a week filled with idle time and feelings of guilt and helplessness at my inability to do much for the relief effort, I confess to feeling a bit proud when our large sack of collected wax was received with cheers and a chorus of "thank you"s by our Chinese counterparts. Good deed for the day accomplished, Leif and I met up with a friend, and headed off to meet up with another. In the car, my friend Andrew received the first call. Ironically, we had just had a few drinks and were in the midst of mocking the persisting public hysteria about aftershocks when the call came. Andrew rolled his eyes, repeating the typical warning out loud as it was conveyed to him, "aftershock warning... sometime tonight or tomorrow... 6.0 to 7.0 in power... wait, it was reported on TV?!"

Aparently, the news in ChongQing reported last night that there was likely going to be an earthquake last night or today in the ChongQing area, and among the unnerved ChengDu populace, such warnings are not taken lightly. By the time that we arrived at our destination, the street was congested with cars, and the sidewalks full of people camping supplies, abandoning their homes for the safety of the great outdoors.

The contrarian that I am, I argued with my friend that we were safe in his apartment- despite the cracks in the walls- because his building was built recently, and none of the 20+ aftershocks of 6.0+ since the initial quake had caused buildings in ChengDu to collapse. Though we were all aware of the possibility that we might be overreacting, the constant phone calls from our friends pleading for us to be safe eventually led us to head outside to the public plaza nearby. I conceded that I would not want "he didn't listen to caution" to be engraved on my tombstone.

So we waited it out in the plaza till 3am, trading stories and musing on the situation. As I said then, my problem with the situation is this: there is no immediate foreseeable resolution. If an aftershock does come, then people will be on edge waiting for the next one to arrive; if an aftershock does not come, then people will continue to wait for the predicted one to occur. At about 2, Andrew got hold of a wireless Internet network (bless this technological world) and we were reading a New York Times article about the panic in ChengDu hours after being surrounded by it. The line "it is not clear on what basis this prediction was made," elicited a chuckle from the group, and shortly after we we're disbanding, heading back to our respective homes. Leif and I slept soundly and today, after rising, were informed that no aftershocks had occurred, though we should stay wary of potential tremors over the next few days.

In observance of the 3 days of morning for quake victims, I witnessed something that I never expected to see in China today: a prohibition on playing computer games at Chinese internet cafes- probably the single most popular leisure activity in China. Entertainment venues are closed, and Leif is probably not going to get a chance to visit the panda research base outside of the city, but ChengDu remains, unscathed.

PS. The earthquake predicted by the ChongQing TV station was said to threaten a fault line near ChongQing, significantly farther from ChengDu than that of the original quake. So please don't be consumed by worry for the people of ChengDu, we are safe- far safer than the refugees and the rescue workers in proximity to the epicenter.