Since arriving in Chenzhou, we have seen the damage and heard the news, and both are shocking.  Early estimates say US$7 billion damages, not counting the losses of businesses and farms.  We got to see some of the disaster areas, and it’s worse than we thought.  I just found out, and was shocked, that there’s no NGO here, no other relief crews besides local government.  They don’t even have enough people to remove fallen trees from the roads.

We were able to make our first stop this morning at the Chenzhou Social-welfare Orphanage, where there are 150 orphans and 20 elderly people.   We delivered 426 bags of formula milk powder, 14,000 diapers and two suitcases of medicine.  We also ran basic health checkups on each child.  All the babies’ body temperatures were low, and one new-born had scleredema (caused by lack of warmth and nutrition).  We gave out chocolate and cereal bars to the kids for regaining energy. The orphanage had been using glass bottles filled with hot water as bed warmers, but we were able to provide 50 safe and long-lasting bed warmers.

Around noon time, we visited a nursing home for the impoverished elderly.  There were over 20 elders there.  The cold made them shiver, also seriously affected their sleeping quality and health status.  OB provided them with handheld warmers to make their winter easier.  They were touched by our presence and care and they held our hands tightly and kept saying “thank you for your kindness and wish you peace!”  Spring Festival is approaching, and there are more needy elderly lacking warmth.  We will do our best to deliver warmth to more elderly and we wish everyone suffering from this disaster a Happy Spring Festival!

Being the first NGO on the ground, we felt it was important to take video and photos, and let everyone know of the situation here.  Also, we are picking up needed cash donations to continue offering assistance.  Conditions in the city were serious but not life threatening except to particularly weak individuals or young babies perhaps.  The countryside we heard was much worse so our team traveled to two areas outside the city in order to view the situation and immediately move into critical planning and response.  We met with local government officals for needed meetings.  But now - no more meetings.  Time for action and to get critical supplies to the neediest populations in a timely fashion.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, February 5th, 2008 at 3:21 pm and is filed under Asia, China Disaster, James Xiao. 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.