Government and Policy

Sichuan sends warmth to every quake victim

By Huang Zhiling (China Daily Sichuan Bureau)
Updated: 2009-12-02 17:26

BEICHUAN: Although this winter this year is chillier than it's been in the past, Zhao Wenhua, a prefab resident in Leigu town in Beichuan county, Sichuan province, which was ravaged by the magnitude-8.0 earthquake last year, is not worried about her survival.

Sichuan sends warmth to every quake victim
Ninth graders attend a physics class in a prefab high school in Anxian county, Sichuan province. Anxian is under the administration of Mianyang. [Huang Zhiling] 

"Mid-last month, my family of three received three quilts and two electric carpets," said the 33-year-old nurse in a prefab clinic.

As the mercury dropped on the wake of this winter's first snow on November 17, Sichuan authorities has accelerated the distribution of quilts, cotton-padded clothes and trousers and heating equipment to quake-hit areas.

It has distributed 2.8 million quilts, 3 million cotton-padded clothes and trousers, 30,000 electric carpets and nearly 10,000 heaters, according to the provincial department of civil affairs.

"The provincial government has purchased another 40,000 quilts and will send them to the quake zone," said deputy department chief Chen Kejie in an interview with China Daily.

The department has sent many teams to the quake zone to direct the distribution of materials to ensure not a single quake victim will shiver in the cold, he said.

It is more than one year and a half after the May 12 earthquake last year, many quake victims in Chengdu, the most affluent city in Sichuan, still huddle in prefabs and makeshift houses.

According to vice-mayor Xie Ruiwu, 58,000 people in Dujiangyan, Pengzhou and Chongzhou cities and Dayi county, which are under his city's administration, have to spend this winter in prefabs and makeshift houses they have built themselves.

As all the residents of the prefabs and makeshift houses still have quilts, cotton-padded clothes and trousers the city government distributed last winter, the city government has put more emphasis on the reinforcement of their shelter, disease prevention and the supply of food, he said.

The city's construction committee will reinforce all the prefabs and makeshift houses and provide heating equipment for each resident free of charge while the municipal bureau of health will be in charge of the prevention of contagious diseases such as flu.

The city grain bureau has stored 19,000 tons of rice and 1,900 tons of edible oil to to the quake victims through winter while the municipal bureau of civil affairs has allocated a special fund of 2 million yuan (US$294,118) to provide a monthly aid of 300 yuan (US$44) for each handicapped quake victim without any source of income from this month to next March, the vice-mayor said.

In the less affluent Mianyang to the north of Chengdu, 610,000 quake victims need 250,000 cotton-padded clothes and trousers and 190,000 quilts to spend the winter.

The city government has prepared 76,378 cotton-padded clothes and trousers and 80,875 quilts. The rest will be purchased and sent to each quake victim, said Yang Dezhong, deputy chief of the Mianyang municipal bureau of civil affairs.

Ma Zhenfeng, chief of the Sichuan provincial climate center, is concerned about the safety of using heating equipment in prefabs in this colder winter. He suggests governments in quake-hit cities and counties pay more attention to safety, as the prefabs are densely populated and a fire would destroy a large number of prefabs.

To prevent fires, the Chengdu municipal government has asked inspectors to patrol around each cluster of prefabs three times a day, while the Shifang municipal government in northern Sichuan has provided closed furnaces which can keep the flame inside.

Liu Guozhen, 66, a farmer in Renhe village in Yinghua town in Shifang, said with a smile: "Last year, I did not dare to use a furnace for fear of a fire. With the closed furnace, it will be all right this year."

Apart for providing clothes, bedding and heating equipment, the province is beefing up construction of permanent houses for quake victims to solve the problem of surviving the biting winter once and for all.

Of more than 1.6 million rural houses damaged in the quake, some 1.5 million have been rebuilt, said Qiu Jian, chief planner of the provincial department of construction.