At a magnitude of 7.9, the earthquake that rocked China’s Sichuan province is now estimated to be the country’s deadliest in recent history. Fatalities have tallied over 15,000 in an industrial city that was reduced to a living situation most closely resembling a refugee camp. As national guards continue rescue efforts in rain drenched rubble, the potential for after-shocks has driven most families from their homes. Access to any type of building or upright structure still standing is prohibited by Chinese officials. Without shelter, citizens unable to evacuate the area sleep in plastic bags to keep dry.
Despite the Chinese governments efforts, the rain-drenched hillsides remain unstable and prone to landslide. International sympathy has started to come in from the United States, international relief organizations and even from the Dalai Lama who offered his prayers to the victims.
Hundreds of dams around the epicenter of China’s earthquake have been damaged and Chinese troops scrambled Wednesday to plug cracks and open sluices to prevent flooding of already devastated communities.
The National Development Reform Commission, China’s top economic planning body, said the earthquake had damaged 391 dams. It said two of the dams were large ones, 28 were medium-sized and the rest were small ones.
The official Xinhua News Agency said 2,000 troops were sent to work on the Zipingpu dam, which lies on about 6 miles up the Min river from the badly damaged city of Dujiangyan in Sichuan province.
Xinhua quoted the Ministry of Water Resources Wednesday as urging protection of the Zipingpu reservoir, saying Dujiangyan would be “swamped” if major problems emerged at the dam.
Via : Yahoo News
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Engineers at Purdue University and the Republic of Turkey have come up with a bold (their word) way to save the residents of Istanbul from a catastrophic earthquake: Build a second city somewhere else. Like that’s so easy? The Purdue guys needed two months and TeraGrid—the world’s largest open-science computing grid—just to build a fly-through animation of their proposed city.
Istanbul is not well prepared for earthquakes and is expected to get a big one within the next 30 years. The proposed “satellite” city would not only offer residents a refuge but would have all sorts of amenities missing in old Istanbul, such as modern information technologies and security systems. And of course, earthquake-resistant structures.
Turkey can’t afford to lose its most important city, and bringing Istanbul up to modern standards would cost an estimated $50 billion. But it’s hard to believe that a brand-new city capable of sheltering 12 million wouldn’t cost a whole lot more than that. The proposal sounds like a fun computer modeling exercise for Purdue students but hardly a realistic solution for Istanbul
