By: Diana Thébaud Nicholson

Diana Thébaud Nicholson — Wed, 21 May 2008 02:09:14 +0000

Quake Tidbits From a friend in Beijing
Sniffer dogs working 22 hours and pausing to eat one meal a day, are suffering from cut feet and mouths, so the government has sent in special sheathes for their feet.
The mental stress is another thing. One dog started sobbing when searching through a building in Mainzhu. “The dog has been trained to find people alive. He has never seen so many dead and must be very grief-stricken” the dog’s keeper said.
Three days before the quake there was a mass migration of toads from the area of the epicentre. Scientists insist it is not scientific evidence of an impending quake, despite a prediction five years ago based on patterns in tremor activity and publicizing clues about animal behaviour. Human chauvinism is alive and well..
Today’s paper has a photo of a female soldier carrying a rescued Pomeranian across a suspension bridge.
Three Pandas are missing from China ’s most important reserve for this endangered animal. The government has not yet established the safety of the 1,590 pandas living in the wild in Sichuan , Shaanxi and Gansu .
A three day moratorium on recreational activities has been declared. Today the best guess is 50,000 people dead, and 20 million animals, along the Longmen mountain earthquake belt. The strength of the quake has been upgraded to an eight on the Richter scale. My local The Bookworm, has raised more than 120,000 RMB and cololected 10 tonnes of emergency supplies.
Yesterday, six days after the quake, a man buried underground for 147 hours was removed alive; relatives lied to him that the quake had only happened two days ago. The spraying of disinfectant against smell and disease began at all sites that day however.
Tragic tales fill the news, like 14 year old amputees… operated on while heavy equipment at the scene stopped out of respect for doctor and patient. A policeman who arrived at a collapsed school in Beichuan county where his 15 year old son was trapped with many others under the rubble, directed the rescue workers to begin with students easiest to reach. He saved 30 students; his son died waiting.
Refineries and nuclear power plants in the region are deemed safe but tens of thousands of people are living in tent cities now. 700 to 800 trucks are dispatched with food and water every day from a central rescue coordination centre, to discourage the mobile from converging on one area. Trains moving the wounded have had their windows removed to facilitate efficient loading and unloading of stretchers.
Rock bands in Beijing are organizing fund-raising concerts while schoolchildren fold hundreds of paper cranes in memory of the victims.
Applications flood in from around the world to adopt quake orphans. China ’s insurance companies have offered to provide each orphan with 1000 yuan per month until the age of 18. Nothing to learn from FEMA then.
After a three minute national silence this afternoon - the largest collective mourning in human history - tens of thousands of people spontaneously appeared at Tian’anmen Square to cheer the nation on.

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By: Diana Thébaud Nicholson