China hits close to home

[jillithian]

An email from my co-worker:

Just a brief update to you all…

After 2 days of tense worries and anticipation my wife Mary and I finally got to talk last night to our daughter Katie and her husband Thomas in China. They live in Sichuan province very near the earthquake center. Their town has had minimal damage because most of its buildings have been built in the last 20 years. Their apartment was built 5 years ago and only suffered minor cracks to plaster walls here and there. There however were some deaths on the campus where they are going to school - 3 miles from them. They lost power for a day but power, gas, phone and internet services are now mostly working. They have not slept in their 7th floor apartment since the quake. Aftershocks have been occurring a couple times an hour for the last 2 days making it hard to sleep. So they are staying in the first floor apartment of their best friends.

But the story is very different when you leave town, especially heading north into the mountains. They with a community of “like minded” friends from Chengdu in coordination with the Red Cross have organized their own recovery and aid team. They have a larger 4 wheel drive utility/ambulance vehicle and 2 other 4WD trucks with supplies and some medical aid that they are now driving into the mountains as far as they can - to provide what help and assistance they can. The roads are in extremely bad shape with rock slides and quake damage. The majority of homes and buildings in the mountains have collapsed. And as you have seen pictures on TV the living have no place to live.

Thank you all for your prayers and expressions of support for our family these past 2 days.

Update: I nearly forgot! My Department Head for my degree is currently in Shanghai teaching an accelerated version of the Engineering Management course this week! I hope he is doing ok...