(China Daily)
Updated: 2008-05-13 07:56

Shanghai

Tallest building cleared

China's tallest building, the Jinmao Tower, and other high-rise buildings in Shanghai's financial district were temporarily evacuated following the strong tremors, witness said.

Sichuan

Workers evacuated

Workers from the Ford Motor plant in Sichuan were ordered to evacuate their offices yesterday for several minutes.

"When the earthquake hit, our staff left the plant for roughly 10 minutes," a Ford spokesman, Kenneth Hsu, said.

Singapore

Flight to Chengdu diverted

Singapore Airlines subsidiary SilkAir said that it diverted a flight headed for Chengdu, the capital of Sichuan province, after its pilots were told that the airport had closed.

The aircraft, which was scheduled to have arrived at Chengdu at 3:30 pm, eventually touched down at Kunming in neighboring Yunnan province, a spokesman for SilkAir said.

Hong Kong

Region ready to help

The government of the Hong Kong special administrative region said yesterday it will offer every possible assistance to the victims of the Sichuan earthquake.

The regional government is closely monitoring the situation and will respond quickly to the latest developments in disaster-hit areas, and offer every possible assistance, a press release from the information services department said.

The government will also cooperate with related departments on the mainland on disaster-relief work, the release said.

Beijing

Power plants shut down

Six transformer sub-stations shut down and five power plants were disconnected from the main grid in southwestern Sichuan province, the State Grid said.

The load on the Sichuan grid was reduced by 4 million kilovolts (kV), it said.

A 500-kV transformer sub-station and five 220-kV ones in Sichuan were affected, it said, along with five power plants located in western Sichuan.

A series of aftershocks had made it difficult to contact these sites for a detailed damage report, the company said.

Meanwhile, two 220-kV transformer sub-stations and three other power plants in neighboring northwestern Shaanxi province also shut down, reducing the load by 1.5 million kV.

Rain, cloudy weather

Rain will linger over much of southwestern Sichuan for the next three days, the Central Meteorological Station (CMS) said.

A large part of Sichuan will have light or moderate showers and thundershowers until tomorrow morning, Yang Guiming, the CMS' chief forecaster, said.

"The western part of the Sichuan Basin will see heavy rain.

"It will turn cloudy from tomorrow evening to Thursday," he said.

Links to panda center cut

The China Wolong Giant Panda Protection and Research Center is out of contact, the State Forestry Administration (SFA) said.

All communication services linking the center with the outside have been cut off, an SFA official said.

About 130 giant pandas are housed at the center and another 150 wild pandas at the Wolong reserve.

China Daily-Agencies

(China Daily 05/13/2008 page3)