Approaching winter worsens plight of quake survivors

(Xinhua)
Updated: 2008-11-12 19:55

BEICHUAN, Sichuan -- The coming winter is about to worsen the plight of China's quake survivors, who are still trying to rebuild their homes and lives.

Tang Chengyi lost his house on May 12, when the devastating earthquake triggered a landslide in his village in Nanba Town, Sichuan Province.

The 54-year-old Tang has been building a temporary house for his family, including his mother, wife and two children.

"My family will soon have a warmer place to get through the winter," Tang said. He has been working on the wooden house for more than a month and expects to finish it in a few more days.

The landslide buried Tang's small manganese mine. All he has left are his hands to rebuild his family's life, he said.

One day he might build a permanent home, but in the meantime, he's putting up a temporary shelter with the government subsidy received by those in his village.

Each family was eligible for 2,000 yuan (about 290 US dollars), which will pay for a simple wooden structure, said local official Li Hanjun.

"We will help every resident move out of tents and into warmer housing before the spring festival," he said.

Li said the government had been working to reopen the roads connecting remote villages to the outside world to facilitate transportation. The government had also tried to purchase sufficient building materials and find safe sites for new, permanent houses.

"It's not easy," Li said. "The whole province has been facing material shortages."

According to local official statistics, more than 11 million people in the province need food, more than 3 million need warm clothes and quilts and 270,000 need medical care.

Deputy director of the provincial Department of Civil Affairs Chen Kefu said the initial severity of the situation had been eased by the efforts of the whole country.

Still, the quake zone lacks many things, and many people face spending the winter in tents that were hastily put up in the summer, Chen said.

More than 4 million yuan, 4 million garments and 770,000 quilts had been donated to the province as of early November. Another 2.8 million quilts and 2.9 million garments will be donated nationwide.

Relief supplies had been distributed to every corner of the quake zone and the job was expected to be finished by the end of November, he said.

Other relief goods, including electric blankets and electric heaters, will be handed out within a month, said Jia Dechun, an official in Qushan Town, one of the worst-hit areas of Beichuan County, where more than 120,000 people need help before the winter.

Every villager living in a temporary shelter in Qushan town got a quilt from the local government, including 59-year-old Gui Zhengqiong of the Qiang Nationality.

Gui lost her father and daughter-in-law in the quake, which devastated the county. Her family used to live on a mountain, which is no longer safe.

"It's not that cold when I close the door," Gui said, with a smile as she cooked lunch for her husband and granddaughter in a shelter kitchen, sent by the government of a coastal city in the eastern Shandong Province. The temperature is usually less than minus 10 Celsius in winter, she said.

"I hope I can go back to the mountain, but I don't know when," she said. Her nationality's culture is tightly linked to the mountains.

A permanent house for her six-member family will cost 150,000 yuan, or about 15 times their annual income -- most of which was lost this year.

Gui has heard that the government will offer subsidies of 16,000 to 22,000 yuan for permanent houses, and she can borrow up to 50,000 yuan from banks, according to government policies.

"It may be a little bit freezing this winter, but I feel the warmth of the whole society," she said.