On the Ground Reporting

I am connected to someone whose husband is currently in the earthquake zone. She has relayed to our group his story. As it is so different from the stories put out by the Chinese news agencies, and presumably also by the foreign media, I thought it worth posting.

"My husband is from Chengdu and he flew there on Tuesday to help out. He
has been in the hard-hit villages in the mountains this whole week. He did bring
a whole bunch of medical supplies, including antibiotics, with him and handed it
out to people... Another thing that may be needed is baby formula. In one
of the villages, there was a 17 day old baby whose mother was killed in the quake. They had no formula whatsoever The entire village was destroyed. My husband said it was a ghost town. He managed to get that baby into a helicopter headed to Chengdu, but he also went to buy some formula to give to the babies there.

"Even though you see all these clips on TV about the search and rescue
process that is supposed to be going on, my husband has told me that this is not
really true in many areas. He said that many places have completely stopped the
search and rescue, and that the military and rescue personnel have been sent
away. Even though he arrived in the mountains on Wednesday, he said that
there were really not that many teams there yet, and most of the people were
sitting around the whole time not doing anything. He said it was really chaotic,
nobody knew what to do, everybody was waiting around to follow the orders of
their leaders (and obviously weren't really getting any orders). Even
though lots of military were sent to the mountains, their job was just to clear
or barricade the roads. They did not help with search and rescue. Only the
firemen were authorized to do that, and they were also the only ones with
equipment to do that with. He said he was really disappointed in what he saw up
there.

"Also, as the military and firemen were sent home yesterday, they were
required to delete all of the photos they took while up in the mountains. The
officials also won't let any private parties, companies, etc go up there to help
out anymore, and reporters are also being restricted now. Overall, my husband
does not feel this was a very successful search and rescue effort, and feels it
did not look at all like what they have been showing on TV. He says in many of
those mountain areas, they gave up on finding survivors 1-2 days ago. Such a pity."

In a related note, I found a very interesting column on the political situation surrounding the earthquake at http://pajamasmedia.com/blog/chinas-political-earthquake/ . The Chinese government has not only failed to rescue the thousands of people in the aftermath of this quake, but people are fully aware that a lack of zoning codes and building restrictions led to the construction of hundreds of thousands of buildings ensured to crumble under an earthquake.