Yesterday, Operation Blessing’s Hong Kong, Philippines and Indonesia divisions together responded to the snow disaster in southern China and planned to provide relief in the most-affected Hunan Province. While we were preparing for sending out our first team, we received phone calls from Chenzhou Orphanage and were told that the 140 children were running out of milk powder, diapers and medical supplies; also another rural elderly nursing house asked for assistance on food and warmth. The voices of those help requesting were making us more aware of the serious situation.

Today, Feb 4, 2008, Operation Blessing’s 1st disaster relief crew headed out to Chenzhou, Hunan Province. We did not have much information about the snow disaster other than what we saw on TV and the internet. The bad weather in Hunan Province forced us to fly to Guangzhou instead then take train to Chenzhou. It’s raining in Guangzhou when we got there. Chenzhou City Government Guangzhou Representative Mr. Wang escorted us from the airport to train station, he said “you just can’t imagine how many people the snow disaster has blocked their way home for the holidays.” We also learned that Beijing-Zhuhai Express Way has been closed for a long time, 47,000 travellers got stuck on the expressway for over 11 days, half a million stuck outside the Guangzhou train station. Two days ago, 2 dead and over 1,300 fainted in the crowds.  The government assigned a large number of police from Hebei Province to keep the train station in order.  Carrying a huge amount of medicine and blankets with us, we could not even possibly go through the crowds to get to the train.  Mr. Wang explained to the police director that we were a disaster relief team.  The police director was touched by the fact that we sacrificed our personal holidays and came all the way from Beijing to provide relief, and he said “whatever it takes, I will ensure you and the relief goods get on the train on time.”  They transported us with their police motorbikes all the way to train platform, and we jumped on the train right before it left.

This entry was posted on Monday, February 4th, 2008 at 3:47 pm and is filed under Anny Li, 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.