While this blog was in remission, the tragedy of the 5.12 earthquake in Sichuan occurred. I’d left China only weeks before and listened to the emerging news with horror.

As of 8 June 2008, the death toll stood at 69,134 people. 17,681 people were still missing and 374,061 were injured. The scale of the disaster is hard to take in. It’s hard to comprehend that so many people lost their lives, especially the cruel twist that so many children were amongst the dead.

Yet the pictures I’ve seen on the Internet really drove home the extent of the devastation to me. I haven’t been to that part of China, but I’ve been to other similar areas. Similar cities and villages, with similar landscape and similar buildings. So although it’s hard to comprehend the numbers, I can imagine the scene all too easily.

My heart goes out to the Chinese people, especially those who lost loved ones, were injured, or were involved in the earthquake. My heart also goes out to China itself, which has endured so much hardship this year.

Thankfully, there’s been no epidemic. It’ll take time to stabilize the situation, longer to rebuild, longer still for those involved to come to terms with what happened. My thoughts are with China throughout this period. I’m sure China will emerge stronger than ever.

I have other thoughts on some of the issues around the earthquake, but I’ll leave it at that for now.

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Tags: earthquake, News

This entry was posted on Wednesday, June 18th, 2008 at 3:41 pm and is filed under News. 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.