Summary

My field trips from Chengdu to the earthquake villages were limited by time and the fact that not all disaster zones could be reached by bus.  Below is a summary of my findings and recommendations.  Each section corresponds to a disaster relief phase, from the initial phase of providing rescue efforts in the immediate aftermath, the intermediate transition period, to the final rebuild phase.  Some of these phases will overlap in time.

Early Rescue Phase

It seems that this phase is best left to be handled by the government and professionals (such as mountaineers, engineers and medical personnel).  Untrained volunteers could in fact create unnecessary burden to the rescue teams.

Providing shelter and basic needs for displaced quake victims

Even though NGOs are not the best fit when it comes to the immediate rescue efforts, we can provide support and logistics help to help settle displaced quake victims.  The Chinese government has done a good job where supply is concerned, but distribution of shelter, food and water is not well organized, which is where organizations like ours can come in.  Here are some examples of the kinds of things NGOs can help with:

1. Supply distribution - For disaster areas where supply of food, water, shelter, shower facilities, etc. are still lacking, NGOs should consider donating materials such as tents, clothing, comforters, food, cookware, water filters, portable toilets, and shower facilities.
2. Help keeping temporary shelters sanitary. - recommend sanitary best practices to victims.

Intermediate Transitory period

In my opinion, this phase and the rebuild phase are where NGOs can be most effective.  Even though this is a temporary period, it could be as long as one to three years. In these temporary shelters, families can live together.  Toilets, kitchen, laundry facilities, schools, medical clinics can all be provided.  Water, electricity and gas will also be provided.

In this phrase, NGOs can play an important role to introduce and integrate displaced quake victims into their new surroundings in the following areas specifically:

1. Culture and Education
   1. Donate computers and other education facilities (lab equipments, TVs, projectors) to schools;
   2. Donate adult and children's books, magazines, DVDs, CDs.
   3. Provide self learning and entertainment venues, such as teaching classes on painting, calligraphy, music, dancing, or hold sports competitions.

2. Sanitary and Mental health
   1. Educate victims on sanitary practices
   2. Help seniors, orphans and disabled adjust to their new environment;
   3. Provide artificial limbs for amputees;
   4. Provide mental health services
   5. Organize in-home visits.

3. Other
   1. Promote the importance of environmental protection
   2. Promote and protect the culture of ethnic minorities of the disaster areas

Post Disaster Rebuild

Projects in this phase can be categorized into the following:

1. Rebuilding of entire villages and towns - some of the towns and villages may need to be rebuilt entirely either on the original site, or on a different site.  After the quake, government will institute higher construction standards.  I do not advise rebuilding schools before the constructions codes have been established.
2. Building reconstruction
   1. Hospitals - Some Hong Kong charitables will likely help rebuild hospitals.
   2. Residential areas - this is more difficult for NGOs to help, since it's difficult to ascertain residents' level of income.
3. Help revitalize economic activities in disaster areas, so that residents can be self sufficient:
   1. Conduct field trips to mountain areas and see if there are poor farmers that need help.
   2. Purchase manufacturing materials
   3. Travel to disaster areas to promote tourism.

I feel strongly that if NGOs don't coordinate amongst each other, there will be a lot of inefficiency and wasted money and time.  Therefore, there needs to be a renewed effort to increase communication among NGOs.  I will discuss this separately in a follow up article.

We arrived Guangyuan City in the evening. It is in Qingchuan County, one of the worst hit places by the quake. But the city does not seem to be impacted too much. Not many houses collapsed. But the street was filled with tents. The driver told us that since the aftershocks are still frequent, people do not dare sleep at home in the night. Since May 12th, they all stay in tents during the night. He also complained that the government didn't provide any tents for them. Most of the tents are constructed by the citizens themselves. I sort of agreed with him since the tents are in short supply even in the most seriously damaged areas.

Leigu was flattened in the earthquake

Since my seat on this minivan was on the last row, I could only take a few photos. Still, I saw most of the farmers’ houses had been damaged severely from An County to Leigu Town of Beichuan County.  There were some self-made tents in front of houses.  I believe those farmers had to stay in tents over night.  Along the road there were several piles of tent supplies and wood for house repairs.

During these past few days, we have traveled on different freeways through counties and towns, and those roads were still in good condition. Once we left An County, the road was damaged. There was a long rupture in the road that was covered with rocks of all sizes.  One of the rocks was as big as a house.  You can image how destructive it was when rolling down that hill.

We arrived at Chigou Village near the town of Leigu.  Several volunteers from 512 NGO Service Center were helping there. This place had not received as much attention as the disaster area we had visited the last few days. We had heard that hundreds of soldiers are in these villages, but here there were only a hundred soldiers and few supplies for reparations. Since they didn’t have enough tents in town, dozens of children could not go to the temporary tent school. So these volunteers had organized teaching curricula for these children.  One of the volunteers is a music teacher and she had brought a small electronic keyboard.

The volunteers in Chigou Village are living in tents, like everyone else.  At first, they didn’t even have any cooking utensil.  Later a villager offered them a cooking pan.  They used rocks to construct an oven.  Shengchui bought some dishware like bowls and chopsticks.  They had to haul their own water. There are no bathrooms. Even though these living conditions are very difficult, the volunteers said they would continue to help and serve here as long as they were needed.  One of the volunteers is a Director of Hunan TV Station. He arrived at Chengdu on 14^th and then came here. He decided to stay here with other volunteers after he saw the serious situation.

Some children were sent to Jinan, another city, to go to school, and they are expected to return after 3 months.  Because of this, not so many children came to Chigou Village to take classes. The volunteers intend to visit each household to see how many children need classes. If the temporary tent school could take care of those kids, the 512 support team could then feel comfortable to handover the task of taking care of these children. One volunteer told us that some of the villages are very poor so we also asked the volunteers to see whether any households need special help.

As we left Chigou Village, we made a detour to Leigu Town.  There we only found destruction with every house damaged. Shengchui said there had been a disgusting smell there four days ago.  Perhaps a disinfection job had removed the odors. Our car also had to be disinfected when we left Leigu Town.

Throughout our trip today, most of the houses we saw had collapsed or were severely damaged.  However, some new buildings were complete and intact. It suggests that as long as the quality of the houses is good, they can survive a level 8 earthquake. Of course, this is just my personal opinion.

Tomorrow we will head for Ganshu’s Wen County. Since this area does not receive much attention, reports are sparse regarding their conditions. Some other Hong Kong NGO friends asked for my help to obtain information from that region after they heard of Wen County’s situation.  This time I am not only responsible for my organization, but also for other friends. This duty is getting heavier; hopefully I will not disappoint you all.

June 3, Pengzhou City

Today, we went to Pengzhou City to visit the towns supported by Chengdu Science Academy, accompanied by Vice Chairman Mr. Zhen. We first arrived at Hongyan Zheng. In the town, there are over five thousand households and over sixteen thousand people. The town consisted of nine villages, spread around plains, hills and mountains. Most of the houses either collapsed or were in dangerous conditions and the scenario was the worst in the mountains. It was confirmed that the mountains were no longer inhabitable. The two villages there were originally in those mountains needed to be completed relocated for redevelopment. The primary industry in the town was edible tree fungi (“Mu-Er”, a popular Chinese food). It was the harvest season, but the earthquake has destroyed most of the Mu-Er. No one is buying any of the remaining Mu-Er. The economic loss to the local residents was huge.

Hunan Province is the corresponding “support province” of Pengzhou City. Hunan’s Center of Disease Control was conducting immunization work in town. On the other hand, Chengdu’s Xindu District and a construction company in Jiangxi sponsored the construction of the local mobile homes. According to the General Secretary of Hongyan Zheng’s Science Association, the town was in most need of tents. We saw a lot of people living in very large temporary tents made up of transparent plastic sheets. Currently the temperature has risen to over 30 degrees Celsius. I heard that the temperature would exceed 40 degrees Celsius in the tents sometime and it was unbearably hot for the refugees to stay in these temporary tents. I chatted with a few women who were outside the tents. They told me that they have only got rice once since the earthquake. Each household with several people only got one blanket and they have not received any living subsidies either.

There are two elementary schools and one middle school in Hongyan Zheng. Although the schools did not collapse during the quake, some of the buildings are now in dangerous conditions. We first visited the middle school. Two classroom buildings and one dorm have only been pulled down because they were dilapidated. The remaining two buildings need significant renovation work. Construction of mobile classrooms had just been completed and classes would resume tomorrow. The Principal told the engineers that they lacked over 100 desks and chairs. Mr. Wu asked me if I would consider supporting them. I said, the buildings didn’t completely collapse. Therefore, they could retrieve the desks and chairs from these buildings. They also got several hundred new desks and chairs. Although they do not fully replace all the old ones, there seemed no real need for more desks or chairs. Later I privately asked a teacher what the school needed. She said they only needed books. She hoped to broaden her students’ minds by providing them with more books. In terms of desks and chairs, she did not feel a need.

We then visited an elementary school. A row of buildings there had already been pulled down. The teachers now have moved into the students’ dorms; however, they dared not to go to sleep at night inside the buildings out of fear for aftershocks. They all slept in the tents outside. However, there weren’t enough tents and several people had to share one. It was very inconvenient. The school had chefs for its cafeteria prior to the quake. These chefs have all become workers to assemble mobile houses. The teachers now have to cook themselves. The kitchens were temporary in outdoor settings. There were an incredible number of flies because there’s a septic tank nearby. When it came to supplies, they said there was no shortage of bottled water but there was a shortage of almost every other supply.

Mobile homes were being built beside the school to settle more refugees. According to the construction team, Chengdu’s Xindu District along with a few companies from other parts of China had sponsored these mobile homes. These mobile homes seemed quite well designed with a good set of essential facilities. Even the septic tank was sizeable and well constructed.

TVB (a popular HongKong TV channel) and several journalists from other prominent TV channels in HongKong interviewed the four representatives of Engineers Without Borders. TVB plans to produce a program focused on the redevelopment of Hongyan Zheng. I did not have direct contacts with the journalists and have no idea when the program would be broadcasted.

In the afternoon, we went to the other town – Tongji Zheng. In the town, majority of the houses were either dilapidated or had collapsed. Few houses stayed intact. When we arrived, no government official was around. There was only one person from the local Science Association and he was completely swamped with work. According to him, the whole town was significantly impacted by the quake, with an estimated economic loss of about 1.37 billion yuan (~200 million USD). There were over nine thousand households and the population was over thirty thousand. There were two middle schools and two elementary schools in the town. Because none of the schools completely collapsed, only one student died as he was trampled to death during the evacuation.

In the yard of the town hall, there were piles of supplies and many bottles of water. Among the supplies were rice, potato, urea and many other sorts. According to the worker at the Science Association, the biggest quake-caused problems was the damage of the water systems. As a result, the water plants had to ship bottled water to many quake-affected places and the transportation was very inconvenient due to damaged roads. Meanwhile, underground water had been contaminated with colibacillus and not drinkable.

Afterwards, we visited Tongji Zheng Elementary School. Because Premier Wen had visited this school, it has received a lot of media attention. When we arrived, CCTV (the primary TV channel in China) was there producing some programs. There were many large display boards with information of the school. The original school buildings were no longer there and the mobile classrooms had already been constructed and were in use. I felt relieved to hear the students’ reading and singing inside these classrooms. The mobile school offices were quite spacious and fully equipped with office supplies. Heat insulation of these mobile houses was also pretty good. Even though it was very hot outside, the temperature inside these mobile houses was comfortable. The school was also facing the problem of water shortage. Mr. Liang, a visiting engineer from Engineers Without Borders, is a specialist of public health and civil engineering. Therefore, it was a perfect way to apply his expertise. He will provide the school with a design blueprint for a secure and sanitary water supply system.

Today, we visited two towns that were damaged by the quake in different degrees. Again, we feel that the government has done a lot. Although the distribution of supplies may need some improvement, it was not an easy task to settle such a huge population of refugees. Now that the first stage of relief work is almost completed, we are in a transition period from relief to rebuild work. As is often said, relief work needs to be immediate while rebuild work needs to take time. Redevelopment work involves long-term development planning and therefore requires comprehensive research. For example, some counties and towns may need to be relocated. Therefore, redevelopment work cannot be hastened without full research. For this reason, the government has planned two stages for refugees’ settlements: (1) mobile homes; (2) permanent homes. Currently the construction speed of the mobile homes is fairly fast. The refugees who suffered from very poor living conditions now feel much relieved. NGOs only have a limited role to play in constructing such mobile homes, except for one corporation in Shenzhen (Shenzhen Wanke Group) which fully sponsored and took charge of building mobiles homes in a whole town. We heard that the mobile homes were very well constructed although there seemed some problems with the toilets. However, NGOs could play a bigger role in helping these refugees to settle into these mobile homes. Because the refugees have left their original homes and now need to live next to strangers, NGOs may be able to help them get adjusted to the new environment and build harmonious communities. In the sixties and seventies, HongKong government relocated many residents from one district to another and caused quite some problems. NGOs involvement was much needed and the current situation here in Sichuan among the resettled refugees is quite similar.

Tomorrow, we will go to Leigu Zheng in Beichuan, located in the epicenter of the quake. Shengcui was there a few days ago and found out that a lot of children could not go to class because there was a shortage of tents. Several volunteers at 512 NGO Service Center were teaching there. They need quite some help.

In my journal yesterday, I mentioned that there were several large tents in the school yard of Zipingpu County Elementary School. In those tents, the children were doing their homework while their parents were cooking. I also saw some soldiers wearing masks were spraying disinfectants on the ground outside the tents. The smell of the disinfectants was very strong and irritating to me; however, the family in the tent did not seem bothered and kept doing what they were doing. Shengcui then told them that for health reasons they needed to leave the tent for a while and go back only after the smell of the disinfectants dissipates. She also told the woman to make sure she cover up her cooking pan on the stove before leaving. We didn’t quite understand why such new tents set up on a clean school yard needed such frequent disinfection. Maybe it’s needed in some places but certainly not here. We guess it must have been an instruction from the central government. The local people simply followed the instructions without further considering if it would be suitable for the local conditions. Such frequent disinfection seems to impact the residents’ health, waste the disinfectants and pollute the environment. Maybe we worry too much.

On the one hand, we feel that the government’s earthquake relief work is very well organized. On the other hand, we feel that there may some excess in certain supplies, such as bottled water. We saw water bottles everywhere and most of them were small bottles. Such a huge concentration of wasted plastic needed proper treatment or they would cause serious pollution in the future.

On our way back from Chengdu, we visited a “Natural Farm Co-Op” set up by Chengdu River Research Institution. The project is primarily focused on organic farming and waste management. It was quite inspiring and we hope the practice will be utilized more broadly later.

June 2 Day 2

After some passionate discussions, the teams decided on the second day’s itinerary. In the morning, we will meet with some specialists from Cheng Science Academy and some representatives from Chengdu City and River Research Center. In the afternoon, we will do a field trip investigating a project set up by Heifer International in County An. We also had a very late dinner while still passionately discussing issues around earthquake relief and redevelopment.

This morning, we met with members of Chengdu Science Academy and Chengdu River Research Institution. Our engineer representatives from Engineers Without Borders made a powerpoint presentation, which covered the organization’s objective – contribute to the redevelopment efforts –backgrounds of participating engineers and previous projects, such as simple environmentally friendly toilets and water storage basins. They also showed a video clip of an earthquake specialist in HongKong who visited an earthquake affected region in a previous project.

Representatives from the Science Academy also introduced the government’s preliminary redevelopment plan and talked about some post-quake reflections by people in the whole architecture and construction field.  For example, they need to improve the earthquake resistance level of school and hospital buildings. There need to be enough public space between buildings in Chengdu to accommodate refugees. They need to identify a second water source for Chengdu to cover emergency water needs and set up a central system to coordinate and distribute relief supplies.  Chengdu Science Academy has over 80 affiliated NGOs, each with specialists in a certain scientific field. At the beginning after the earthquake, they went to the frontline regions and directly participated in relief work. Right now, they have started to make recommendations to the redevelopment plan. They will conduct detailed research and provide a comprehensive strategy report to the government. The towns that the Science Academy is directly in charge of supporting are Tongji Zheng and HongYan Zheng. They hope that the engineers from Engineers Without Borders can help build an elementary school or a local school in those towns.

The earthquake affected site that Chengdu River Research Institution supports has over 60 farming households. It’s very close to the epicenter. Although most of the houses there did not collapse, they were damaged in various degrees. People at the Research Institutions hoped that the engineers could suggest simple and economic ways to strengthen these houses.

Mr. Wu suggested that Engineers Without Borders is a sister organization of the Science Academy and therefore it would make sense for them to participate in the redevelopment of those two towns. He expressed wishes to visit those two towns. We also plan to visit more earthquake affected regions and will try to make our suggestions 10 days after our return to HongKong.

In the afternoon, we visited the Chengdu representative office of Heifer International. Its chief, Mr. Chen had just returned from a fundraising trip to HongKong. He had originally arranged for us to visit Guangyuan but later changed the site to Zipingpu County of Dujiangyan. In that county, many houses collapsed.

When we passed Dujiangyan’s city downtown, we noticed that few buildings collapsed although they all have many cracks, especially those with the typical X shapes caused by earthquakes. Before entering Zipingpu County, we saw the gate of the famous Two Kings Temple which was badly damaged. As we got closer to the county, the situation worsened rapidly. There were ruins everywhere. It was indeed a very sad scene. In front of the city hall there were relief supply distribution sites. There were many bottles of water. Inside the relief tents were full of relief supplies. In the yard of the city hall there were several tents too. These are the offices of the county officials. The tents are very small but there’re electricity, computer, printer, fax machine and all the typical office supplies. The county chief is a young man with a graduate degree. He said that the damage around the city hall is relatively small although the building cannot be used any more.  He said that the houses on the other bank of the river all collapsed. County residents now all live in tents. Not a single student died in his county because the county government has rebuilt two schools in the past 5 years. These schools did not collapse after the earthquake; however, there are many cracks and all the computers were destroyed. Currently, construction groups are building temporary “mobile schools” for the county somewhere close to the river. There will be classrooms, dorms, a dining hall, toilets and bathrooms. There won’t be libraries or labs.

According to the county chief, the government above him has made very good redevelopment plans. The Xindu District of Chengdu will support the foundational redevelopment work of Zipingpu County. Qiangzhou District of Hebei Province will on the other hand provide all the mobile homes so that all the refugees can soon move into those mobile homes. Currently, each refugee can get about 25 kilos of rice each month, 10 yuan (about 1.5 dollars) in subsidy a day, and unlimited supplies of bottled water, clothing or other basic supplies. If one does not want to live in a mobile home and would rather build his or her own house, each household can receive 2000 yuan (about 300 dollars) in subsidy.

We then visited a school that did not collapse. The school was built in 2005 and we could see it had been quite grandiose before the quake. It looks nicer than many schools in the city. However, there are many cracks in the walls, although there weren’t many of the X-shaped cracks. The engineers examined the situation, took photos and video clips which they planned to bring back to earthquake specialists in HongKong for further investigation.

On the school’s playground there were several large tents, in which lived the teachers and their families. They were also full of relief supplies. Beside the school playground were two rows of tents. We entered one of the tents and started chatting with the “house” owner. Her husband was out of town working while her daughter was going to school in Chongqing (another big city in Sichuan away from the epicenter). Although the house collapsed, she was glad all family members were safe. There were furniture, a bed, blankets, a fan, a rice cooker and some rice in her tent. She even hung cured meat outside her tent door. She said that nowadays the government and NGOs provided a lot of relief supplies. She got both food and cash subsidies and felt relieved. She said that the government treated her very well. The biggest problem was that it was very windy at night and that she sometimes couldn’t fall asleep out of fear for aftershocks.

June 1 Arriving at Chengdu

Volunteers persevere under harsh circumstances

Today, I arrived at Chengdu along with four engineer representatives (Mr. Wu, Mr. Su, Mr. Liang and Mr. Lin) from Engineers Without Borders HongKong. Upon arrival, we met with Dr. Xu and his wife at 512 NGO Service Center. Ms. He, one of the coordinators at the center explained the operations of the Service Center, including management of supplies and finance. After learning about our goals and expectations for the visit, she suggested that some people to meet and places to investigate. She thinks that an area that most likely needs help from NGOs is the construction of refugees’ settlements. Afterwards, Ms. Guo, another coordinator, who’s also the President of Sichuan Social Science Research Institution, introduced the government’s preliminary redevelopment plans. In addition to the central Chinese government’s earthquake relief and redevelopment center, each level of local governments, all the way down to the county and village level, has a similar planning organization. Organizations abroad can contact both specific organizations or companies and such planning organizations. She said that tents are the primary options for refugees’ settlements as a first step, while large-scale construction of mobile homes will provide a longer term solution at a later stage. Such settlements will use families as units. She does not think that the engineers from HongKong need to participate in the construction of such settlement sites because the government already has plans in place. However, she was particularly interested in the mobile toilets that Mr. Liang had brought from Guangdong province (in south of China near HongKong) to Chengdu. Later in the meeting, Mr. Guo and Mr. Xiao came back from their field trips to villages in the epicenter. Mr. Tiao also mentioned the strong need for toilets in those earthquake affected regions.