Thousands of soldiers scoured China's mountainous earthquake zone yesterday for a military helicopter that was carrying injured quake survivors when it crashed in a fog at the weekend.
There was no clue as to the fate of the five crew members and 14 passengers who were on board the army Mi-171 helicopter when it went down on Saturday in southwestern Sichuan Province, the state-run Xinhua news agency reported.
It said four rescue helicopters had launched missions in the area where the crash was believed to have taken place, assisted by more than 3,000 soldiers on the ground.
But the search had so far been in vain, the Chinese defense ministry said.
“The wreckage of the crashed helicopter has not yet been found,” the ministry said in a statement, adding that a “continuous and all-out air and ground search” had been launched.
Military personnel involved in the effort said they believed the crash took place in the vicinity of Zhaogong Mountain in Sichuan Province, which bore the brunt of the May 12 quake.
The helicopter was on a mission to carry epidemic prevention experts to Li County and was returning with residents too seriously injured to be moved by land, the agency said.
Reflecting the grueling routines forced on military chopper crews in the quake zone, it had completed 63 flights since the earthquake on May 12.
The death toll from the quake, China’s worst for a generation, has risen to 69,016, with 18,830 still missing, the government said on Sunday.
Meanwhile, more than a million people waited anxiously for drainage work to start on a menacing lake — the size of more than 50,000 Olympic-size swimming pools — created when quake-triggered landslides blocked a river.
Regular troops and paramilitary forces toiled for a week to dig a diversion channel for the Tangjiashan “quake lake,” hoping to prevent it overflowing and flooding densely populated areas downstream.
By late Sunday, the last troops had been flown out by helicopter, leaving a handful of experts charged with monitoring the situation, the water resources ministry said on its Web site.
It remained unclear early yesterday if the plan to divert water via the newly dug channel would succeed.
State television said earlier that plans to blast holes in the rubble with dynamite had been abandoned amid fears it could trigger a flood.
The Tangjiashan lake is just one of about three dozen “quake lakes” created by the 7.9 magnitude tremor, and people throughout the region are monitoring as the others swell.
“We have sent our water resource specialists and geologists to check out the quake lakes,” said Wen Miaogui, a spokesman for Hongbai Township, one of several communities devastated by the quake.
“We think they won’t be too dangerous. Downstream we have a lot of good infrastructure, so we think we will be able to avoid disaster,” he said.
While that work goes on, people are still trying to piece together their lives.
Of the dead, more than 11,000 are reported to be children and teachers who were killed when schools collapsed on top of them.
It made Children’s Day, which China marked on Sunday, a particularly poignant occasion as grieving parents mourned their offspring and vented fury over the alleged shoddy construction of many school buildings.
“[The authorities] said we should come and celebrate because the kids here today are the future of Beichuan,” a young mother surnamed Li said.
“But my son should be out there ... my son should be out there,” Li said.
China’s military news agency yesterday warned that Japanese militarism is infiltrating society through series such as Pokemon and Detective Conan, after recent controversies involving events at sensitive sites. In recent days, anime conventions throughout China have reportedly banned participants from dressing as characters from Pokemon or Detective Conan and prohibited sales of related products. China Military Online yesterday posted an article titled “Their schemes — beware the infiltration of Japanese militarism in culture and sports.” The article referenced recent controversies around the popular anime series Pokemon, Detective Conan and My Hero Academia, saying that “the evil influence of Japanese militarism lives on in
ANTI-SEMITISM: Some newsletters promote hateful ideas such as white supremacy and Holocaust denial, with one describing Adolf Hitler as ‘one of the greatest men of all time’ The global publishing platform Substack is generating revenue from newsletters that promote virulent Nazi ideology, white supremacy and anti-Semitism, a Guardian investigation has found. The platform, which says it has about 50 million users worldwide, allows members of the public to self-publish articles and charge for premium content. Substack takes about 10 percent of the revenue the newsletters make. About 5 million people pay for access to newsletters on its platform. Among them are newsletters that openly promote racist ideology. One, called NatSocToday, which has 2,800 subscribers, charges US$80 for an annual subscription, although most of its posts are available
GLORY FACADE: Residents are fighting the church’s plan to build a large flight of steps and a square that would entail destroying up to two blocks of homes Barcelona’s eternally unfinished Basilica de la Sagrada Familia has grown to become the world’s tallest church, but a conflict with residents threatens to delay the finish date for the monument designed more than 140 years ago. Swathed in scaffolding on a platform 54m above the ground, an enormous stone slab is being prepared to complete the cross of the central Jesus Christ tower. A huge yellow crane is to bring it up to the summit, which will stand at 172.5m and has snatched the record as the world’s tallest church from Germany’s Ulm Minster. The basilica’s peak will deliberately fall short of the
Venezuelan Nobel peace laureate Maria Corina Machado yesterday said that armed men “kidnapped” a close ally shortly after his release by authorities, following former Venezuelan president Nicolas Maduro’s capture. The country’s Public Prosecutor’s Office confirmed later yesterday that former National Assembly vice president Juan Pablo Guanipa, 61, was again taken into custody and was to be put under house arrest, arguing that he violated the conditions of his release. Guanipa would be placed under house arrest “in order to safeguard the criminal process,” the office said in a statement. The conditions of Guanipa’s release have yet to be made public. Machado claimed that
RSS