At 11:59 p.m. on Monday, a 6.2-magnitude earthquake struck Jishishan County, Linxia Prefecture, Gansu Province, causing severe damage to both provinces because the epicenter was located on the border between Gansu and Qinghai. The reason why it seems that the magnitude of the earthquake is not too large, but it has caused casualties that worry us, is very important, one is that the earthquake occurred in the middle of the night, and many people did not have time to take shelter in their sleep. Second, the low temperature outside shortens the golden time of the rescue, and although it is very difficult, we still expect a miracle to happen. What's the situation on the ground now, and especially how are the people living there?
Ma Junwen: The house seems to have been hit by a big car, and I was frightened.
Dong Honghai, Principal of Jishi Middle School: The earthquake was very obvious, and it was directly the feeling of the floor bouncing people up.
Ms. Zhang: I started to run out, and I didn't have time to put on my slippers, and when I ran, I felt my legs tremble, and I felt so trembling that I couldn't run out of the room, and for the first time I felt so close to death.
Liuji Township, Jishishan County, Disaster-stricken people: Many elderly people and children were pulled to the square, bonfires were lit, and firewood was brought by farmers from their own homes.
Dong Honghai, Principal of Jishi Middle School: In fact, the lowest was minus 15 degrees Celsius, and 1,800 students were evacuated to the playground, and many children brought quilts to surround them.
Ma Chenghai, a disaster-stricken person in Liuji Township, Jishishan County: I crawled out, and the whole Zhuangzi shouted that someone was being pressed, so I went over to save it.
Ma Weiliang, a victim of the disaster in Liuji Township, Jishishan County: I didn't have any tools, so I just used my hands to plan, and several people's hands were broken, because there were glass and shards on the house.
Jishishan County Hospital of Integrated Traditional Chinese and Western Medicine is located in Dahejia Town, which was more severely affected, and the hospital urgently set up a treatment point on the street at 2 a.m. on the 19th.
Ma Yuanjun, President of Jishishan County Hospital of Integrated Traditional Chinese and Western Medicine: This is our temporary pharmacy, which stores some first-aid medicines. After the earthquake, the cracks in the inpatient and outpatient buildings of our hospital were obvious, and the medical staff risked their lives to run inside and take emergency equipment and medicines out of the pharmacy so that they could be used for emergency treatment.
The injured are identified here, and after simple first aid, they are transferred to Jishishan County People's Hospital and other places.
A 60-year-old village cadre who insisted on evacuating 34 households after being injured was repeatedly urged by his son to come to the hospital for treatment.
Cao Dunzhong, son of the earthquake victim: He didn't come in the morning when the ambulance pulled him, but now it's serious, I just rushed back from Yushu, and after the test results came out, he was all right, and I immediately felt that I had no strength.
Gao Lanfang: When I was about to get up, the walls on both sides collapsed, and I leaned over to protect one child in my arms, and the other child behind me, and the walls on both sides pressed on my shoulders, so they were both fine.
Someone escaped the earthquake that night, only to be swallowed up by the sand sand that followed it. The mud gushes out of the ground and reaches a height of 3 meters.
Disaster victims in Jintian Village: Last night, in my sleep, I was still running, escaping, and the mud was chasing after me, I was running.
When it comes to earthquake rescue, the golden 72-hour rule will immediately jump out of everyone's mind, but this golden rescue time is compressed by the low temperature in the earthquake-stricken area. At the same time, Jishishan County, where the epicenter is located, is located in the transition zone between the Loess Plateau and the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau, and the terrain is complex.
After the 6.2-magnitude earthquake in Jishi Mountain, a sand surge occurred in Jintian Village, Haidong Minhe County, Qinghai Province. Yang Shoulin decisively grabbed his wife and children and rushed out of the house.
Yang Shoulin, a villager from Jintian Village: At that time, after the rumble, I said hurry, there was an earthquake. My daughter-in-law was wearing slippers and pajamas, and I pulled them out.
He found that the other neighbors had not come out, and he had escaped from danger, so he ran to the next neighbor's house.
Yang Shoulin, a villager from Jintian Village: When I first ran here, I pushed it, and the door was closed, so I knocked hard, and I said come out quickly, and she came out.
Wang Ximei, a villager from Jintian Village: It was very dark, I didn't see anything, I only heard Yang Shoulin's voice, and I was very, very moved.
When Yang Shoulin turned around and ran to other neighbors' houses, the sound of sand surging down trees was heard not far away. Yang Shoulin quickened the pace of calling. The villagers who were called out also immediately went to other neighbors' houses to knock on the door, and everyone shouted and knocked, and in just over 10 minutes, nearly 100 people from more than 20 surrounding households all ran out of their homes in time. This time, the villagers rescued themselves and each other, saving nearly 100 lives in more than 10 minutes.
Tuanjie Village, Jishishan County, Gansu Province, is about 20 kilometers from the epicenter of the earthquake, and thousands of houses have been damaged. After the earthquake, the village quickly formed a disaster relief team, the "Solidarity Squad", which soon gathered more than 30 people, and the team members were divided into six groups and knocked on doors from house to house. On the premise of ensuring safety, 385 villagers were evacuated in time, and the team also rescued more than 10 trapped people.
Ma Weiliang, a villager from Tuanjie Village: At that time, all the houses collapsed badly, and there were no tools, so they just used hand planing.
Han Kai, Secretary of the Party Branch of Tuanjie Village: We must do this thing to the end, do it well, and let the people rest assured.
After the 6.2 magnitude earthquake occurred in Jishishan, Gansu implemented traffic control on some roads leading to the earthquake-stricken area, and vehicles unrelated to the society detoured.
The 15-member commando team of the Jishishan Fire Brigade rushed to Kangjiao Village, Dahejia Town, which was severely affected by the 6.2 magnitude earthquake, 40 minutes after the 6.2-magnitude earthquake in Jishishan, and was the first team to arrive at the epicenter to carry out rescue. In the face of the emergency situation that many houses collapsed in the village and people were buried, the assault team was divided into two groups to immediately carry out rescue on the waste, most of the houses collapsed at the scene were brick and tile bungalows, and the position of the trapped people was not very deep, in order not to cause secondary damage to the buried people, the rescuers cleaned up the bricks with their bare hands, and raced against time to rescue the trapped people.
Sun Xiaoyang, Linxia Detachment of the Gansu Armed Police Corps: The biggest difficulty is that the roads on the ground are not smooth, the roads have cracks when they collapse, and some houses have collapsed, and there is a certain risk factor. There is also a risk that the wall is diagonal, which poses a risk of collapse, making it very difficult for search and rescue. The next step is to search and rescue personnel, and the other part is to repair roads so that heavy equipment and equipment can enter the disaster area as soon as possible.
Yu Ruofei, captain of the Gansu Blue Sky Rescue Team: It is impossible for the rescue team to arrive at the scene so quickly, the first round of investigation is that the villagers themselves help each other, and they will call their neighbors around. The second round is the village cadres, according to their registration and then start to search, at that time many villagers have already run out of their homes, the village cadres search is not 100 percent comprehensive, the villagers that round of search and rescue is not 100 percent comprehensive, and the third round is to go to professional instruments and equipment, such as the ruins collapsed, it is necessary to use the life detector to listen to whether there is sound inside, to see if there is sound wave feedback inside, whether there is heat, Thermal imaging, after such a search, to determine that there is no one underneath, this is a more systematic and comprehensive search.
As of 8 o'clock on the 22nd, the 6.2-magnitude earthquake in Jishishan has killed 117 people in Gansu, and as of 22 o'clock on the 21st, the earthquake has killed 31 people in Haidong City, Qinghai Province. Although the magnitude of the earthquake was not high, the intensity of the earthquake was high, coupled with the dense population, and it occurred at night, and the earthquake casualties were serious. The rescue team also found that most of the rural houses here are civil structures, the houses have poor seismic performance, and the temperature of minus ten degrees Celsius has greatly compressed the golden 72-hour rescue window.
As of 3 p.m. on the 19th, the rescue work in Gansu has basically ended, and the focus of relevant work has shifted to the treatment of the wounded and the resettlement of the affected people. The emergency deployment of funds and supplies is also a kind of rescue. As of 12 o'clock on December 22, the Gansu Provincial Red Cross Society alone has received more than 300 million yuan in donations from all walks of life, and before that, the Central Ministry of Finance allocated 220 million yuan to support the earthquake relief in Gansu and Qinghai provinces. When one side is in difficulty, rescue units and organizations at all levels have gone in an orderly manner, and funds and materials from all parties are constantly pouring in, and they are actively and nervously helping the victims survive the winter and recover and rebuild.
When one side is in trouble, all sides support. In the aftermath of the earthquake, firefighters from the local and surrounding cities set out overnight, and when they arrived, they launched a search and rescue operation. But at the same time of search and rescue, in the case of low temperature, logistics support must also quickly keep up, hungry to eat, sleepy must have a place to rest, injured or sick need medicine and medical support, at the same time, there must be warm equipment, so that everyone is not frozen, in the face of so many needs, is the road related to life and health smooth?
An hour after the earthquake, Jishishan County Hospital received an emergency call that a pregnant woman in a nearby township was in labor, and because she was worried that the building would suffer aftershocks and power failure, she returned to the building to complete the delivery after two hours of observation and preparation in the ambulance, and the first "earthquake baby" was born safely. As the earthquake situation stabilized in the next few days, as of Thursday, 10 children had been born in Jishishan County after the earthquake. After a newborn mother's amniotic water suddenly ruptured, she also rushed to the hospital, and finally the child was born.
The earthquake disrupted normal life and order, and the high number of injured people, coupled with the extreme cold environment, made the rescue work even more difficult. After the earthquake, medical teams from all sides rushed to the disaster area. An hour and a half after the earthquake struck, a number of hospitals in Lanzhou also assembled field mobile hospitals and earthquake relief medical teams and rushed to Jishishan County overnight. After more than three hours of travel, they encountered snow and road collapses, combined with night driving, and no street lights in the area where the power was cut off, causing them to arrive slowly. In the morning after the earthquake, relevant units and neighboring enterprises spontaneously participated in dredging the main rescue channels and cleaning up damaged and dangerous houses and falling objects.
After a brief suspension of traffic, traffic in Jishishan County has returned to a relatively normal order since Wednesday. As of 11 a.m. on Tuesday, 88 percent of customers in Jishishan County had been restored. During this period, telecommunications companies also provided delayed shutdown services to the affected areas. With all this help, the road to the disaster area has become relatively smooth. Jishishan County immediately issued an announcement to accept donations of funds and materials, and made a detailed list of scarce materials. For a time, many people contacted to donate, and many of them sent urgently needed items such as medicines and clothing, all of which helped the lives of the affected people.
After the company placed an order, the truck driver Zhou Lei saw it and quickly took it. In the past, Zhou Lei could earn seven or eight thousand yuan back and forth for this kind of order receiving distance, but because this trip was sent to the disaster area, there would be no goods on the return trip, so according to his original plan, it was almost not profitable to remove the cost. But this trip also brought him the same heart-warming protection, in addition to the platform's promise to give a subsidy to warm-hearted drivers like him, and at the same time, the expenses on the road were unexpectedly smaller.
Truck driver Zhou Lei: When I got off the expressway, all the gates of the expressway were open, and the traffic police commanded in front and told me that there was no need to charge high-speed fees, as long as the vehicles for earthquake relief came, all of them did not charge high-speed fees. In this way, I can save more than 1,000 yuan in highway fees, and I especially want to come over and do my best with my own ability.
In addition to the expressway, there are also airlines that have issued announcements that all Gansu inbound and outbound routes will carry professional rescue teams and relief materials free of charge. In view of the severity of the disaster, the Ministry of Emergency Management has upgraded the national disaster response to level 3. Gansu has also set up a corresponding coordination mechanism to connect and coordinate social forces going to the rescue. As of Thursday and Friday, more and more relief supplies have arrived at Jishi Mountain, and people in the disaster area are also waiting for this aid from afar.
From the second day after the earthquake, the villagers affected in Dahejia Town, Jishishan County, the epicenter, have successively lived in tents in the resettlement site, living is a considerable difficulty in the post-earthquake rescue, it is not whether there are enough tents, but to have cotton tents, quilts, cotton mattresses, and stoves, otherwise the people in the disaster area will not be able to stay overnight. For example, Jishishan is a gathering place for ethnic minorities, with ethnic minorities accounting for 64.9% of the total population.
Zhang Chunlei, a third-year student at Dahejia Middle School, returned to the village from school to find her home far more severely damaged than the school, with several bedrooms having collapsed.
Beneath the ruins, there are too many cherished pasts. For Zhang Chunlei, the items related to the college entrance examination are what she is most concerned about at this time, and a mobile phone that stores the college entrance examination registration information is also pressed in the collapsed bedroom.
Zhang Chunlei, a student from Dahejia Middle School in Jishishan County: Because our school is closed, and we are not allowed to bring mobile phones, so my mobile phone is also placed in the cabinet, and the mobile phone is particularly important, because the college entrance examination registration is on the mobile phone, and I have to find it out if I log in with that card, that WeChat and that system, I firmly believe that it has always been, and I comfort myself like this.
It was not easy to find the broken walls, tiles and cabinets containing mobile phones, but after an hour and a half of searching, fire rescue personnel recovered Zhang Chunlei's mobile phone.
Zhang Chunlei, a student from Dahejia Middle School in Jishishan County: After stabilizing, I reported to everyone that they were safe, and our homeroom teacher counted the number of people, and I was still very worried about safety. If the number of people is complete, he will call everyone to move the books tomorrow, and he will take online classes when he moves back, because the college entrance examination is coming soon, and there is no time.
Zhang Chunlei, a student from Dahejia Middle School in Jishishan County: On the second day of the earthquake, the government gave us the tent and the stove, and the adults in the tent went to move the supplies, and I was responsible for taking care of the children here, and I also saw the stove.
Since the village was far away from the centralized resettlement site, Zhang Chunlei and the villagers set up resettlement tents near their doorstep. The day after the earthquake, tents, stoves, quilts, and mattresses brought warmth to the villagers. But in the beginning, due to the shortage of supplies, only 10 families could be crammed into one tent.
Zhang Chunlei's father, Zhang Huan: The tent is for the elderly and children first, and at night they all sit around the stove in the tent to keep warm, and we younger adults regenerate a fire outside to keep warm. Another tent was sent to us on Thursday afternoon and now we don't have to heat up outside and we can live inside the tent.
From one tent for ten households, to one tent for four households, and then to one tent per household this Saturday, the material situation in the village is improving. In order to coordinate the transportation of supplies, Zhang Chunlei's father spontaneously became a volunteer in the village, helping to carry the supplies and distribute them door-to-door. In this village, once a quarter of the families were poor, Zhang Chunlei's family was also poor, and later because her father went to work in a nearby scenic spot, he was able to get out of poverty, but after the earthquake, the scenic spot was also forced to close.
Zhang Chunlei's father Zhang Huan: The scenic spot has also been affected, and all the income after the closure of the park may not be guaranteed, but at least the living expenses can be guaranteed.
In Zhang Chunlei's village, the villagers are mainly Hui people, and their diet needs halal food, and the villagers are not centrally settled, so it is difficult to prepare and pick up meals. By Thursday, rice, noodles, oil, fresh meat and other ingredients had been distributed, and the villagers had recovered their pots and pans and started cooking their own meals. At Zhang Chunlei's house, the family finally had their first meal of hot noodles after the earthquake.
Zhang Chunlei, a student at Dahejia Middle School in Jishishan County: I still can't calm down my Xi, because I am afraid that aftershocks will happen at any time, and I hope that our residential area can be restored, my college entrance examination will not be affected, and I also hope that I can enter an ideal university.
Post-disaster relief must first solve the immediate problems, food, housing, medical care and warmth must be quickly followed, but as the immediate problems are solved, the medium- and long-term problems must be faced, because no one can stay in the temporary resettlement site for too long. Because this earthquake is a thrust earthquake, its destructive power is large, there are many aftershocks, many local houses have been damaged, and some have even become dilapidated houses, such as Dahejia Town, Jishishan County, which has been severely affected, and the proportion of local dilapidated houses has reached about 40% to 50%. The good news is that engineering and technical experts are already assessing and mapping the damage to the houses, and plans to complete the emergency assessment of all housing buildings in Jishishan County within this week, what does this mean?
Wang Gongsheng, Chief Engineer of Gansu Provincial Institute of Building Research: This kind of village that has been seriously affected by the disaster can basically be said to have collapsed, and most of the residential houses that have collapsed are old houses in the past, and residential buildings built in the eighties and nineties or around 2000.
With the full development of the housing safety assessment in the earthquake area, professionals have gone deep into the earthquake area to check the housing situation under the condition of good protection. Taking Yangwa Village as an example, more than ninety percent of the houses in the village were damaged to varying degrees.
Some of the houses, even if the outward damage is not serious, have been structurally damaged, and given that there were multiple aftershocks after the 6.2 magnitude main shock, these houses have also been classified as uninhabitable, and all personnel have been evacuated. In addition to private houses, some public buildings were also affected by the earthquake.
In Zuojia Primary School in Jishishan County, there is a large area of falling cement blocks in the corridor, and we will find that it is very thick when we step on it, and sometimes it will be unstable. In addition to the large area of wall skin falling in the corridor, there are also bricks falling, and there are also varying degrees of damage in the room.
Fortunately, on the night of the earthquake, there were no students in the primary school, and the principal also said that there were no casualties among the students in the school at present, but what to do with the damaged teacher's apartment is still waiting for professionals to give the next step. The reason why the 6.2 magnitude earthquake caused such damage to buildings is closely related to the type of earthquake that earthquake experts pointed out.
Wang Qian, researcher of Gansu Provincial Earthquake Bureau: This earthquake belongs to the thrust type of earthquake, which is relatively destructive, and the thrust type earthquake is the upward movement of the upper wall of the fault, and the lower wall is the downward movement, which is an earthquake that hedges against each other. Jishi Mountain area is located in the northeast edge of the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau, this place earthquake is the characteristics of shallow sources, another aspect, is the site of the seismic wave amplification effect, we all know the concave and convex terrain, or the landform of the river valley, as well as the large thickness of loess, seismic waves have a relatively large amplification effect.
On Thursday, Wang Qian's expert group went to Dahejia Town, Jishishan County, which was seriously affected by the disaster, to conduct a house survey, and the reporters who followed the expert group found that the degree of damage to houses with different structural types was also different.
Wang Qian, researcher at the Gansu Provincial Earthquake Bureau: In fact, all types of houses have varying degrees of damage. During this period, we will send various working groups to conduct disaster surveys and upload the results of the investigations to the headquarters to provide an important basis for subsequent earthquake relief and post-disaster reconstruction.
Since the housing emergency assessment is related to the next disaster relief and resettlement work, more than 500 engineering and technical experts at all levels have been dispatched to the scene for assessment after the earthquake. At a press conference on the earthquake held on Thursday, he said that he planned to complete the emergency assessment of all housing buildings in Jishishan County within this week. On the other hand, the residents of the temporary resettlement sites have also advanced the next step of the resettlement plan.
Wang Qian, researcher of Gansu Provincial Earthquake Bureau: In the follow-up, we will move to the resettlement area, which is a key point, especially in this environment like the severe cold. The prefabricated house was put into use, and the follow-up work has been carried out, which is also the focus of our relocation.
As the next stage of resettlement housing, prefabricated houses are being built in full swing, and in Dahejia Town, Jishishan County, people affected by the disaster have moved from tents to prefabricated houses.
Villager of Meipo Village, Dahejia Town, Jishishan County: When I moved in on December 20, I had all the bedding laid out, the stove was set up, the fire was lit, and the food was eaten.
Each prefabricated house is about 18 square meters, and is equipped with a stove, bedding and daily necessities, and the electricity is also more secure, and the living conditions have been improved compared with the cotton tents in the temporary resettlement site. At present, the earthquake area is also speeding up the construction of prefabricated houses to provide safer and warmer places for the affected people.
Wang Qian, researcher at the Gansu Provincial Earthquake Bureau: After the seismic assessment, the habitable houses can be used after repairs, and the uninhabitable houses may have to stay in the resettlement site for a longer time. In addition, for post-disaster recovery and reconstruction, our farmhouses must be built according to the standards of earthquake-resistant farmhouses, we must select the site for new farmhouses, build them in earthquake-resistant favorable areas, and our houses must have some earthquake-resistant structural measures, such as the structural columns and ring beams that we are more common now, which is also a very important factor for us to reduce earthquake damage.
According to the Gansu Provincial Emergency Management Department, it is expected that by next Wednesday, more than 5,000 prefabricated houses will be built in the earthquake area in Gansu. Resettlement and post-disaster reconstruction are ongoing.
When the earthquake came, it brought considerable damage to the disaster area, and when the initial emergency relief passed, there were many issues to consider in the long-term rescue process. For example, Jishishan County, the epicenter, was a national poverty-stricken county in the past during the period of poverty alleviation, and after years of hard work, it is one of the 160 key counties for national rural revitalization, but this earthquake has disrupted people's steps towards the future. Next, how to prevent poverty caused by disasters and how to complete the reconstruction of our homes are all issues that we should pay attention to, and here we must also cheer again for Gansu and Qinghai, and please believe that everything will be fine.
Source: CCTV news client