Fellow-sufferers bring mutual comfort in Mianyang Relief Center

"Car. Banana." A little girl was trying to murmur some English words to David Ferguson, one of the China.org. reporters who are traveling around the deadly earthquake zones in Sichuan Province. The death toll rose to 51,151 yesterday.

The girl's family was with her, living temporarily in a tent. She and her sisters seemed to have put aside memories of the horrible moment on the afternoon of May 12 that robbed them of their grandfather. They play joyously with us.

"Children are innocent and have little understanding about what really happened", her mother explained to us, smiling through the flash of grief in her eyes. The extended family, including their grandmother, came by foot to the relief camp from Chen Jia Ba, a village in Beichuan County, one of the worst hit areas.

"We lost everything," the woman said. "Our hometown is gone. Some flat land has been transformed into cliffs. I have been back once since the quake and I hardly knew the place."
She said she didn't know how long they would stay here, nor where they would rebuild their homes, but she's convinced that it will take at least a year to get to grips with the problems.

Mianyang, the second biggest city in Sichuan and a hi-tech city in southwest China, has a population of 5.3 million people and spreads over 20,000 square kilometers. Anxian and Beichuan counties are among the worst-hit areas. Over 100,000 homeless people from Beichuan, Pingwu, Anxian, Mianzhu, Jiangyou and Shifang have come to downtown Mianyang for help.

Under a preliminary plan that is yet to be approved by government, Beichuan will be rebuilt at a new site in neighboring Anxian County. Beichuan has been sealed off since May 20, and rescue workers have evacuated everyone in the face of threats of lake burst and the spread of disease.

"My hand was shaking as I wrote down the name of every single person in my county who died," a surviving Beichuan official said on a big outdoor TV screen in an interview with CCTV. Many of the audience in the stadium wept.

This is probably one of the best examples of a shelter. More than 20,000 surviving victims of the earthquake sleep inside the stadium and in outside tents, chatting with and comforting each other. They have enough food, drinks and medicines.

Volunteers have come from every corner of the nation and are working hard. Missing and Found persons notices can be seen on a wall. A temporary school is available in two huge marquees, and counseling camps are also dotted around. At one of them, children were drawing pictures to be pinned to the tent walls.

"Some kids are traumatized, but most are in good spirits. When their drawings are put on the wall, they feel happy and proud," an onsite volunteer told me. She borrowed a pen from us to write "From Beichuan Primary School" below a child's name on a drawing.

The first of 6,000 temporary accommodation houses will be built in Mianyang, Beijing government and construction enterprises said yesterday. They will eventually help to build 80,000 such houses in disaster-hit areas. Premier Wen Jiabao also announced on Wednesday that the central government will allocate 70 billion yuan (US$10.14 billion) for a reconstruction fund. A 30-member committee of experts will offer scientific advice on quake relief and reconstruction.

The atmosphere here was less grim than what we saw in Mianzhu City and Hanwang Town on May 20, where 90 percent of buildings were either completely destroyed or are in a seriously dangerous condition, with hundreds of people still buried.

On the banks of the town's river, as breezes blow and the river flows from the foot of mountains, I can imagine this was a fascinating and peaceful place to live. Dongfang Steam Turbine Works, a major state-owned heavy mechanical production enterprise set up in the mid-1960s, and the pillar industry in the local region, has seen its factories, residential buildings and primary and middle schools collapse, killing thousands, including many children.

It was the most devastating sight I have ever witnessed. I stood in the middle of a ghost town, wearing a mask to shield off the smells.

Before arriving in Mianyang City the day before yesterday we heard a report that the Central Discipline Inspection Committee issued a notice on May 20, ordering relevant departments to keep strict trace of and strengthen the supervision of relief materials and funds in every disaster area.

We called the Department of Supervision of Sichuan Province to enquire about their plans. An official answering the phone said they have already sent out 12 work teams. Six are now in quake-hit areas including Deyang and Mianyang, and six are working with relief organizations like the Red Cross.

Children draw pictures in a counseling camp. (Image: China.org)The work groups will oversee every phase of the receipt and distribution of relief materials. A phone number has been made available to the public to allow reporting of any concerns that local officials might be misappropriating or misusing emergency funds, and every two weeks a statistical update will be released to the people and to the international community.

West China 2nd University Hospital under Sichuan University showed us how they receive donations from the general public. Even a gift of candy will be recorded and the donor will receive a tracking receipt. On the Red Cross Society of China's (RCSC) website, people can also access detailed information about donations and where they have been sent.

Wu Peng, an official of the Chinese Foundation for Poverty Alleviation (CFPA), told China.org.cn that as of May 20 they had sent relief materials and funds worth almost 27 million yuan to quake-hit areas. In Qingchuan and Mianyang, supplies are going directly to local people, but in the most severely damaged areas they have left distribution arrangements to local government groups in order not to interfere with military rescue efforts.

He added that they plan to conduct immediate research on the needs of other locations that have suffered badly but are out of the media spotlight, then decide how best to arrange the quickest provision of relief supplies to the victims.