Thousands offered their services after quake in May 2008, and some remain, reports Gao Qihui in Sichuan.

The 8-magnitude earthquake struck Sichuan province at 2:28 pm on May 12, 2008. It killed at least 69,227 people and left more than 5 million homeless. Thousands of people poured in to the area to help, among them many foreigners – rescuers, charity workers, doctors, psychotherapists, construction engineers and general volunteers.

Children play chess during break at a primary school in Mianzhu, Sichuan province. Foreigners have played a significant role in reconstruction efforts in the province that was hit by an 8-magnitude earthquake on May 12, 2008. Zhang Tao / China Daily

Nearly three years later, some of the foreigners remain, helping local communities and their residents move on. Some work for international organizations, others as individuals. At least 20 international non-governmental organizations are helping reconstruction efforts in Sichuan, according to Gao Guizi, a coordinator of the Sichuan May 12 Non-Government Assistance Service Center.
Three foreigners who have been there since the disaster – an American, a Malaysian and a Singaporean – tell China Daily their stories in the earthquake-hit zone.

Initial goal makes way for one that succeeds

Roland Catellier was visiting his son about that time in Pensacola, Florida, 537 kilometers from his Tampa Bay home in the US Southeast. His son’s question started him on a longer journey: “When will you start doing volunteer work again?”

Catellier, then 59, had spent 17 years traveling the world doing volunteer work. He had put that aside for some years to tend to family and business but the earthquake, and his son, started him thinking.

He determined his purpose – helping the homeless rebuild – and started the process of forming the Disaster Relief Shelters Foundation. He arrived in Chengdu, Sichuan province, in June 2008 and made a one-day visit to Mianzhu city, where the quake had killed at least 11,117 people and left more than 180,000 families homeless.

He was more impressed than shocked. Catellier had seen other disasters, including US hurricanes Andrew and Katrina, but in Mianzhu, temporary water facilities and banks were already operating. He found people who were busy and carrying on their lives.

Catellier initially wanted to donate houses to villagers. Through a Peking University professor he had met online, he was introduced to officials of Maoxian county, Aba Tibetan and Qiang autonomous prefectures in Sichuan.

He met the Maoxian officials in July and told them he wished to donate five small houses. But the officials were worried: What about the others who were homeless? Catellier couldn’t afford to house them, too, so his first idea was set aside.

Not long after, someone who had attended the meeting with the Maoxian officials asked if Catellier could build homes for state-supported elderly people and finish a sample unit in November 2008. Catellier said he felt encouraged that he had made progress.

He went back to the United States for a month to attend to details and arrange for a sample unit, a prefabricated house made from structural insulated panels made in China. But when he returned to China in November, he learned that graves had been found on the building site and the project was canceled.

Eleven months later, Catellier found his real opportunity through Sichuan Quake Relief (SQR), which had been trying to build a community center in Shihe village of Mianzhu city. An agreement was reached: SQR would pay for the land and foundation, and Catellier would be responsible for everything above it, including the water system and insulation.

The construction began on May 6, 2010, and it included lightweight steel framing to make the building more earthquake-resistant. Catellier supervised the construction and trained local laborers. He injured his back during the construction of the roof, and it took him 10 days to recover, but Di Kang Le center opened on Sept 12, 2010. The 100-square-meter building is a meeting and activity center for villagers and also provides a meeting place for grassroots non-governmental organizations.

“Now we have a place for the elders to gather to chat with each other,” a 63-year-old villager said.

“I am happy the center is used by so many people,” Catellier said.

His Disaster Relief Shelters Foundation was recognized by US federal authorities in December 2008, and with persistence his constant approach, Catellier overcame multiple obstacles to reach his goal. “My attitude is that the impossible takes a little longer.”

Now he is running a social enterprise in Chengdu to provide graduate students the opportunity to start an undertaking through a business-to-entrepreneur website. The enterprise, Catellier said, will use a significant portion of profit to “donate more small community centers or small school buildings to remote villages all over China.”

Experience and encouragement pay off

Jeyathesan Kulasingam, a Malaysian staff member of International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Society (IFRC), was preparing to rotate out of Indonesia after finishing his mission there. He had worked in reconstruction after the 2004 tsunami and, given several options, chose China as his next post.

He arrived on July 20, 2008, and was surprised. Survivors he talked to in hospitals were already thinking of rebuilding and planning their next steps. Grassroots and international non-governmental organizations were already working to help people recover mentally.

Kulasingam, 43, believes that kind of recovery is a long-term process, and he started working with Red Cross Society of China (RCSC) to help people in Sichuan’s disaster areas return to normal life in terms of their mental health.

He helped design psychosocial programs and implement activities to speed the rebuilding of networks among groups, such as children, women and the elderly. Other activities were developed to identify people who needed psychological treatment to deal with depression.

“But it is not a one-off thing and we do it every day,” Kulasingam said.

It is not just about having fun and playing games, he said, but a program that systematically brings people to see the process of healing and readjustment. “We have dealt with people who lost their legs and hands and helped them accept the fact and regain their normality.”

One is a woman from a village in Mianzhu city who had suffered multiple leg fractures. When Kulasingam met her in October 2008, she was afraid to be treated because she didn’t think she could recover. She dismissed the idea of surgery.

Kulasingam and his team visited her and her family frequently and explained to her how, if she recovered, she could again participate in work and family life. They went with her to physiotherapy sessions to provide encouragement. Finally, the woman agreed to have surgery during Spring Festival in 2009.

Two weeks after the festival, she opened a small store in front of her house. When Kulasingam met her then, he saw a confident and smiling person. Now she walks without a cane and her injured legs are strong.

“We are touched and encouraged by the progress of people,” Kulasingam said.

Those who provide help also progress, he said. As an experienced delegate of IFRC – he started with Red Cross 30 years ago, in primary school, as a volunteer – Kulasingam has worked to develop local Red Cross branches by training staff members.

At the beginning, he said, the programs were strange and the staff members reluctant. “They have to depend on technical support from people like me,” he said, and now they have taken leadership of the programs.

That makes Kulasingam believe his program is sustainable and institutionalized. “Nobody is waiting for something, but moving on. They keep progressing.”

In time, local Red Cross branches will feel ready to run their programs and won’t need his technical assistance. Then Kulasingam can move on to his next post.

Lesson begins on resiliency and culture

Timothy Sim’s father died that day, so he had other things on his mind. It was two weeks before Sim, a psychotherapist in Singapore, would learn about the devastating earthquake.

Over the next two-plus years, he would learn the importance of familiar cultural elements and that “people themselves have the resilience to recover from misfortune”.

As a PhD social worker, he knew about devastation from his work with adolescent drug abusers and ex-offenders and their families in Singapore and Hong Kong, but nothing about relief work or disaster management. Nevertheless, he accepted immediately when a friend who worked for an international charity invited Sim to join its relief work in Sichuan.

Sim, now 45, already had been scheduled to leave the National University of Singapore to join The Hong Kong Polytechnic University (PolyU) on July 2. He took personal leave to visit Chengdu, the capital of Sichuan, on June 4 and then go on to the quake-hit areas. It was the first of many trips to Sichuan; he spent 103 days there in 2009, his peak year.

In the first 12 months, Sim trained medical professionals, psychologists, teachers and social workers to deal with mental health issues in a traumatic situation. He organized summer children’s projects that developed into the Sichuan Expanded School Mental Health Network, which PolyU established in February 2009. Sim then focused on that project, which covers five schools in disaster areas.

But he felt some resistance, and learned about a local saying: “Be mindful of fire, theft and psychotherapy.” So how could mental health professionals provide appropriate services in a disaster? By teaching less and serving more as a catalyst so people could find their own way back.

In September 2008, Sim met four teachers from Yingxiu Primary School, which lost about 400 students in the earthquake. Three of these teachers had lost a wife or child. Their psychological trauma was deep, but they weren’t open to psychological therapy.

During Spring Festival in 2009, in response to their wish for a short break, Sim arranged for them to take a trip to Yunnan province. He thought it was a good opportunity for these teachers to air their accumulated sorrows.

It worked. After they returned, Sim could see they had begun to relax, compose their emotions and plan for the future. Those who had been widowed even started new relationships and eventually married again.

Several months after the trip, the four voluntarily began to tell Sim about their experiences and feelings, and that they worried some of their cherished memories would be forgotten. He interviewed them individually and recorded what they said. When he gave transcripts to the teachers, one of them told Sim, “You have helped me to organize my past experiences and I can close the page now.”

One recovery technique came to Sim by happenstance in Yingxiu, the earthquake’s epicenter, in February 2009. The town had lost about 80 percent of its population.

He was walking down a street when he saw people dancing – dynamically and spontaneously. He learned that it was an after-dinner practice of the local people called guozhuang dance, a Tibetan and Qiang ethnic folk dance.

The idea of holding a show of guozhuang dance came to Sim’s mind, and on May 1, he and the local government sponsored the show. It attracted more than 2,000 townspeople.

“Their mental outlook appeared really good, and they were dancing joyfully,” Sim said. “They have their own power to recover.”

Sim and his social worker team in schools started to utilize indigenous elements to help children. They used traditional Chinese New Year painting activities to attract students. They invited a dance teacher, Liao Zhi, to work with handicapped students in Hanwang Primary School.

Liao had lost her legs in the quake but persisted in dancing. She uses prosthetic legs and performs on a big drum. The children watched, and learned.

A dozen of them danced as a group at their school, and the audience was shocked into silence. In May 2010, Sim arranged for these students, half of whom had lost legs or hands, to perform their dance in Hong Kong to demonstrate resilience from disaster.

Changes came to the local people, but it was not all one-way. Sim said his attitude to his work of psychological therapy has changed as well.

“I need to respect the people I serve, listen to them and know the resources they have that can be used to help them,” he said. “What I teach my students right now is totally different from two years ago.”

On April 1st, 2011, we took reporters from China Daily to Di Kang Le community center in Mianzhu, Sichuan.
It’s been a time since we were there.

Reporter is interviewing a local resident passing by. He said cheerfully,”I come here often to hang out with my friends and drink tea, other villages don’t have a meeting place like it.”

Sichuan Province, which has been undergoing reconstruction since the devastating earthquake last year, was hit by the downpour lasted from last Tuesday to Friday.

The level of pollution forced three treatment plants in Chengdu that get water from Minjiang River to shut down on Friday afternoon.

It meant supplies were cut to most in the east and west of the city, and only restored around 9 a.m.Sunday, a worker of the Chengdu Waterworks Company, was quoted as saying by Monday’s China Daily.

More than 20 trucks were sent by the firm to collect water from other plants to supply residents.

The upper reaches of Minjiang River are vulnerable to geological disasters, said Fan Xiao, an engineer at Sichuan Geology and Mineral Resource and Exploitation Bureau.

Local authorities are now drawing up new emergency water shortage plans, which will include a measure to take water from Beisha River in Dujiangyan.

Beichuan county, one of the areas worst-hit by the May 12 quake last year, also suffered flooding and mudslides from the storm.

More than 43,600 people from 50 villages were affected, costing the authorities an estimated 100 million yuan (14.6 million U.S. dollars).

Some of the buildings in the zone now regarded as a “Beichuan earthquake relic” and the newly built road to Tangjiashan “quake lake” were also destroyed by the landslides.

Source:Xinhua

Rain pours new misery on areas in SW China – People’s Daily Online.

BEIJING, June 25 2009

(Xinhua) — Poor farmers in areas of southwest China struck by a massive earthquake in May 2008 face financial problems in rebuilding their homes, an official said here Wednesday.

Zhang Ping, minister in charge of the National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC), the country’s top economic planning body, said some impoverished people could not get bank loans to rebuild their homes because of their tough economic situation and limited incomes.

Zhang’s remarks came in a report to the ninth session of the Standing Committee of the 11th National People’s Congress (NPC), China’s top legislature.

He reported on reconstruction work after the May 12, magnitude-8.0 earthquake in southwestern Sichuan Province, which left more than 87,000 people dead or missing.

The official called for forceful measures to ensure the rebuilding of homes for poverty-stricken households and aid to address their financial problems, material and labor shortages.

The reconstruction of rural houses should be completed by the end of the year so rural residents could spend the new year in “warm new houses,” he said.

Other problems found were slow progress in the reconstruction of urban homes, reduced financing capacity of rural financial institutions for small and medium-sized enterprises and shortages of building materials and technical support for the quake-hit region, according to Zhang.

He urged increased attention to the psychological problems of quake survivors. Despite counseling, government officials and residents still had psychological problems after having lost relatives and property and then facing heavy life and work pressures, he said.

Two government officials in quake-battered Beichuan County of Sichuan Province committed suicide after the disaster. Feng Xiang,33, and Dong Yufei, 40, both hanged themselves after losing family members. And in Mianyang City, a third official, He Zonghua, 40, jumped to his death from a hotel.

According to a survey by Sichuan University, more than 400,000 people in the quake zone are experiencing post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). More than 40,000 of those with PTSD are at risk of suicide, said Zhang Wei, deputy president of the West China Hospital under Sichuan University.

The Sichuan provincial government dispatched medical groups last year to 10 of the worst-hit counties to relieve officials’ mental stress and ensure every official took holidays. The government also spent money to improve the working and living conditions of the officials.

However, experts admitted China lacked mental health professionals and staff trained in handling PTSD.

Zhang from the NDRC said long-term psychological assistance would be targeted at the population suffering from psychological disorders.

The government would send experienced professionals to offer counseling for local people and provide training for medical staff in the quake area for at least half a year, according to the official.

Staff at grassroots medical institutions in the quake zone were also expected to finish a year of study on psychological treatment in other provinces on rotation, he said.

At the NPC meeting, Zhang told legislators that China had invested more than 360 billion yuan (52.7 billion U.S. dollars) in reconstruction projects in the area as of the end of April.

Reconstruction was under way for nearly 2,800 schools and more than 1,500 medical institutions, accounting for more than 75 percent and 60 percent, respectively, of the total.

Nearly 70 percent of students in the quake zone had moved into permanent school buildings and the percentage would rise to 95 by the end of this year, according to the official.

All students in the region would be back in permanent school buildings next March, he said.

Editor: Zhang Ning | Source: Xinhua

中国地震灾区农民为重建家园而努力

北京，2009年6月25日

（新华社）—中国西南部严重受地震影响的不幸农民们，面临着重建家园的财务困难，一位官员在星期三这样说道。
张平，中国发改委主任，国家最高经济规划机构，说一些穷困的…

详见第205页

]]> http://disaster-relief-shelters.org/2009/07/01/farmers-in-china-quake-zone-struggle-for-funds-to-rebuild-homes/feed/ 0 http://disaster-relief-shelters.org/2009/07/01/quake-victims-still-waiting-for-decent-roofs/ http://disaster-relief-shelters.org/2009/07/01/quake-victims-still-waiting-for-decent-roofs/#comments Wed, 01 Jul 2009 05:15:59 +0000 admin http://disaster-relief-shelters.org/?p=200 2009-06-25 09:28By Tan Yingzi (China Daily)

Ever since her house was destroyed in the massive earthquake last year, Wang Xianqiong, who once owned a beauty salon in Beichuan county, Sichuan province, has been staying in a makeshift shelter with her disabled husband and college-going son.

Though the government has promised its share in helping quake victims build or buy new houses, Wang has no idea when she will be able to start her life afresh in a decent flat.

Beichuan, one of the worst hit areas by the 8.0-magnitude quake, started rebuilding its city on a new site in May. The government has said its residents could possibly move into the new city by May next year.

But houses in the city, even though at subsidized rates, are too expensive for Wang to afford.

“I am earning a living for my family running a small hair salon in the temporary settlement area now. We barely manage to make enough to feed ourselves. How can I save money to buy a flat?” the 41 year old questioned.

Despite efforts and massive investments, the Chinese government is still facing several difficulties in its post-quake reconstruction projects, according a State Council report released yesterday.

The poor in urban and rural areas have inadequate access to financial resources to rebuild their homes and there is still a shortage of construction material, the report said.

As part of the country’s 4 trillion yuan economic stimulus package, the central government has poured nearly 155 billion yuan ($22.7 billion), including $1.8 billion from overseas loans, into reconstruction work.

By the end of April, Sichuan, Gansu and Shaanxi provinces had completed a total of 9,400 projects, mainly in housing, infrastructure, public services, industry and city reconstruction, and kicked off another 21,000 projects.

“The average price for commercial residential housing in Beichuan before the earthquake was about 1,400 yuan per sq m,” Wang said.

The government has promised to give a 32,000-yuan housing subsidy to families of three, plus a 50,000-yuan low-interest loan.

For Wang and others like her, it’s still nowhere close to enough.

“No matter how much the government lowers the prices of the flats, I still have no money to buy one,” Wang said.

Wang’s story is similar to those of hundreds of people in Beichuan county, where most businesses were destroyed, leaving many without means of earning an income.

Wang, her disabled husband and son might have been fortunate enough to survive the disaster, which killed more than 70,000 people, but like most, they have nothing left.

Her life savings were invested in her beauty salon, which, like her house, became a pile of debris.

Zhang Ping, director of the State Development and Reform Commission, told the 9th session of the Standing Committee of the 11th National People’s Congress (NPC), China’s top legislature yesterday: “We always give first priority to housing projects in our whole reconstruction plan.”

In rural areas, almost all houses threatening to collapse have been reinforced and 76 percent of newly constructed houses are complete, said Zhang.

“But the urban housing projects are lagging behind due to the complicated ownership issue,” he said.

In cities, only about half of the shaky houses have been reinforced and “8.9 percent of planned new houses have been built”, according to the State Council report. It also pointed out that in addition to the 51 worst hit counties, other quake-hit regions have “not received enough reconstruction funds” to rebuild public service facilities, such as schools and hospitals.

地震灾民仍在等待安置房屋

2009-06-25 09:28谭颖子（中国日报）

四川王先琼曾经在北川县拥有一家美发店，自她的房子在去年的大地震中被毁坏至今，她一直和她残废的丈夫和正在读大学儿子住在临时板房里。

虽然政府许诺帮助灾民建造……

详见第200页

]]> http://disaster-relief-shelters.org/2009/07/01/quake-victims-still-waiting-for-decent-roofs/feed/ 0 http://disaster-relief-shelters.org/2009/05/11/nation-mourns-quake-dead/ http://disaster-relief-shelters.org/2009/05/11/nation-mourns-quake-dead/#comments Mon, 11 May 2009 10:50:29 +0000 roland http://disaster-relief-shelters.org/?p=64

reconstruction after earthquake, one year aniversary of the 512 earthquake

BEIJING/MIANYANG, April 29 (Xinhua) – An online plea for the public to mourn the 80,000 people dead or missing in last year’s devastating earthquake is being spread rapidly among Internet users, less than two weeks before the first anniversary of the disaster.

“Make sure you plant chrysanthemums in your garden on May 9,” reads the message, posted at kaixin001.com, a Facebook-style social networking website based in Beijing where office workers enjoy buying virtual property ranging from slaves to luxury cars and houses, and planting trees and flowers in their gardens.

“The flower takes 68 hours to bloom, so on May 12, we’ll be mourning those who died in the quake,” it says.

It also advised everyone not to steal others’ chrysanthemums, as most members of the free access website enjoy harvesting and selling others’ plants to make virtual money.

The message, which first appeared at kaixin001.com at 9:20 a.m. Wednesday, had been forwarded to 221,810 people and received 611,600 clicks by 3 p.m.

The nation’s memory of the 8.0-magnitude earthquake is still fresh and overshadows the forthcoming three-day Labor Day holiday starting Friday.

Large crowds of reporters, social workers and volunteers have poured into the quake zones in the western provinces of Sichuan, Gansu and Shaanxi, hoping to share local people’s woes and give a helping hand, in one way or another.

GUITAR BAND IN WHEELCHAIRS

Every day at 6:30 p.m., Yan Peng and his eight schoolmates begin their daily guitar course in a makeshift classroom of Changhong Training Center on the suburbs of Sichuan’s Mianyang City, the temporary campus of Beichuan High School that toppled in the quake.

“I’ve always loved the guitar, though I never learned to play before the quake,” said Yan, a quiet, bespectacled 17-year-old.

Yan was among the first to flee the ramshackle school building, but soon returned to save his classmates, and ended up in the ruins himself. He lost his right leg. The school suffered nearly 1,000 dead.

Four months after the quake, the school received a special gift from Beijing-based Capital Normal University: 15 guitars and some volunteer teachers — all music majors of the university who take turns teaching in Mianyang.

“This is the best we could do to help these students,” said Sheng Xue, a junior student whose volunteer service began two weeks ago.

Yan is among the nine most avid learners who have persisted. All of them bear injuries. Some are permanently confined to a wheelchair.

Besides music, Liu Min said she also loved volleyball, though she could only play on wheelchair these days. The 17-year-old recalls with affection a meeting with Premier Wen Jiabao last November, when she led the band to sing “You and Me”, the theme song of the Beijing Olympics.

“I used to be healthy and sportive,” said Liu, who had wanted to be a police officer but now plans to major in law.

NEW HOMES BUILT ON HORSEBACK

Wei Songping and his horse left at daybreak to carry cement for the villagers: a fleet of seven horses was all the 17 families in the mountainous Liangjiashan Village rely on to transport building materials for their new homes.

“It’s not because we don’t have manpower or vehicles,” said Wei. “But no vehicle can make it along the only path down the mountain, which is merely a meter wide.”

Liangjiashan was a mountain-top village separated from the county seat of Wenxian in Gansu Province only by a river. Almost every home was destroyed in the quake and the whole village had to be relocated to a hillside township closer to the county seat.

“I can’t stand overburdening my mule,” said villager Li Zhanlin. “The animals take turns taking a day off every three days.”

In nine months, Li’s mule carried 40,000 bricks, 12 tonnes of cement and 20 cubic meters of sand that have now become his family’s five new houses.

His neighbor Liang Baocheng, however, lags far behind. “I have to finish building the new home by the end of June. My son is about to get married this year.” In rural China, parents traditionally hold themselves liable for building new homes for their adult sons.

“Local authorities held geological surveys and confirmed the new site was safe from quakes,” said Liang, who said the government was doing a “great job”. “They could do better, though, by paving the road. If only the path was two meters wide, we could have moved into new homes earlier.”

In Wenxian, one of the hardest-hit areas in Gansu Province, about 35,000 families are rebuilding homes in the mountains. At least half of them rely only on horses, according to the county government.

“The horses have to toil for as long as the rebuilding may take,” said Liang. “Our homes are built on horseback.”

LOOKING TO THE FUTURE

Flowers are constantly seen these days in the ruins of Beichuan, the Sichuan county that perished in the quake. The scarlet corn poppies and yellow and white chrysanthemums seem to be mourning for the dead and welcoming a safer new Beichuan.

People in Sichuan, young and old, are taking their time to shake off their nightmarish past.

In Anxian County, Lin Xingcong and his bride are giving finishing touches to their new home. “We’ll plant orchids here,” Lin said as he pointed to the clearing between two houses, “with seeds from my old home.”

Nine-year-old Xiao Daipeng, a primary school pupil in Shifang City, forced a smile as he subconsciously touched the stump of his right leg. “I wish I could score better in science class,” he said when Xinhua reporters asked what was in his dreams.

“In the future? I wish I could find a good job,” said Xiao.

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