BEIJING – My mobile phone started buzzing in my pocket around 2:30 p.m. yesterday as Operation Blessing staff called to make sure I was OK during the earthquake. I was outside our offices and sensed nothing – but in Beijing we watched from our first floor offices as Chinese employees from businesses literally ran out of the building.

My husband called to say he was safe with the boys at home on the 19th floor apartment where our home light fixtures and plants swayed along with the building for nearly two minutes.

We heard news reports that Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao was already on a flight on the way to Sichuan Province and the earthquake’s epicenter – so we feared that numbers would climb from the reported “4 dead” to the “8,500 dead” now being reported by the Chinese media.

900 children are trapped in a school in Sichuan that collapsed. I taught English one summer at an old school building with around the same number of children… and I remember their bright faces in school uniforms, their proud parents, and now imagine frantic parents digging through the rubble. One region has reported that 80 percent of its buildings are collapsed and destroyed. 

Operation Blessing has an office in Chengdu, China – and we quickly called to find out their status. No answer. We tried all staff mobiles – all powered off. We realized that communications were down.

My mobile is buzzing as messages come in from our Chinese staff, as they labor to put together a plan for sending in a medical team of doctors and medical personnel to start treating the estimated 10,000 injured. 

It’s been a tiring week of working to get donated goods into Myanmar – and now we’re responding to an earthquake in our own backyard.

They are expecting more aftershocks tonight which is concerning as the buildings that held up during the initial quake may have been weakened, and smaller aftershocks could be more damaging than the initial.  I’m trusting my own young children will sleep safely through the aftershocks and say a prayer for those Chinese parents with an empty child’s bed tonight.

This entry was posted on Monday, May 12th, 2008 at 1:43 pm and is filed under Asia, China Disaster. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.