This study analyzes the exposure of energy and transport assets in Asia and the Pacific to climate change and earthquake hazards and highlights how multi-hazard assessment can help strengthen the resilience
Beijing: Quake-hit Sichuan province in China witnessed its worst aftershock 13 days after the main earthquake on May 12. The aftershock at 6.4 magnitude on Richter scale gave rise to serious fears of quake-created lakes bursting and causing serious floods. Initial reports showed that one person had died and 260 injured in the aftershock, but detailed reports were being awaited.
Tangshan(China): Well before this city was destroyed by an earthquake 32 years ago, the coming disaster was loudly preceded by strange animal behaviour and other bizarre signals that survivors wish they heeded.
Hundreds of Colombians huddled in makeshift shelters on Sunday afraid to go home a day after a 5.6-magnitude earthquake damaged scores of homes and triggered landslides killing at least 11 people. In the rural town of Quetame, the most seriously hit, families spent the night sheltered on the town's football field or in a public building after the quake knocked out water supplies and damaged or collapsed houses and its church.
Hundreds of troops carrying explosives trekked through a quake-devastated area in southwest China on Sunday, attempting to reach a "quake lake" that threatens a secondary disaster. Concerned by a steep rise in the water level of a giant lake at Tangjiashan, authorities want to blast a hole in the barrier before it bursts and causes a flashflood. Thousands have been evacuated below the lake as a precaution. Also on Sunday, state television reported an 80-year-old partially paralysed man had been pulled alive from rubble, 266 hours after the 7.9 magnitude quake hit.
More than 5,000 health workers have fanned out to disinfect China's earthquake-hit villages, and doctors and nurses are stationed round the clock in refugee camps to try to prevent survivors from falling sick. At the Jiujiang Sports Stadium in Mianyang, housing more than 20,000 survivors, an old man watches his wife grimace after downing a small vial of traditional Chinese medicine. "This is very good, it will stop you from getting sick now that your immune system is weak," muttered a nurse as she waved the couple away.
Chinese engineers are starting to make headway against lakes that have formed behind landslides, threatening yet more devastation on the earthquake-stricken valleys downstream. Last week's big tremor changed the landscape of northern Sichuan province, as mountainsides were obliterated along the Longmenshan fault. In Hongguang, in northeastern Sichuan, the earthquake caused both sides of a valley to slide, burying three villages and 900 people. The Qingzhu River is trapped behind. "The mountains merged," said Gao Xiao, who barely escaped a landslide that roared past her house.
China said the death toll from last week's powerful earthquake jumped to more than 51,000, while the government appealed Thursday for millions of tents to shelter homeless survivors. The confirmed number of dead rose to 51,151, a jump of almost 10,000 from the day before, Cabinet spokesman Guo Weimin told a news conference. Another 29,328 people remained missing and nearly 300,000 were hurt in the May 12 quake centered in Sichuan province, he said.
China vowed on Wednesday to deal severely with anyone found responsible for shoddy state building work, as parents demanded to know why last week's earthquake destroyed so many schools, killing thousands of children. Nine days after the massive tremor hit mountainous Sichuan province in southwestern China, rescuers were still finding survivors. A woman was pulled alive from a tunnel at a hydropower plant in the town of Hongbai, state media reported. The number of dead and missing rose to more than 74,000, with a further 247,000 hurt.
Thousands of panic-stricken people stayed out in the open overnight in the quake-ravaged Sichuan province after a government warning about a strong aftershock, as China struggled to find shelters for some 50 lakh rendered homeless in the worst natural calamity in three decades. The stories of miraculous survivals meanwhile continued to pour in with rescue workers pulling out a 31-year-old man, who spent 179 hours under the rubble of a power plant.
China raised the number of dead or missing from a devastating earthquake to more than 70,000 on Tuesday, as rescuers found another survivor eight days after the huge tremor hit. A government statement said the number killed had now topped 40,000, and state news agency Xinhua reported that a further 32,000 were missing. Authorities had previously said they expected the final death toll to exceed 50,000. More than 247,000 were injured.
