A Year of Disasters... 四川大地震
Recently, disasters have changed the life of many.
In a report it was stated that the death toll from Cyclone Nargis in Myanmar was said to be 77,738 dead and 55,917 missing.
According to the international Red Cross, the death toll alone is probably about 128,000, with many more deaths possible from disease and starvation unless help gets quickly to some 2.5 million survivors of the disaster. And with the monsoon season coming, Myanmar was bracing for a long haul ahead.
As for China, this year it has entered into a year of disasters. China's run-in with disasters began just before February's Lunar New Year, when the worst winter storms in five decades hit the country’s densely populated southern and central region.
In March, huge anti-government riots erupted in the Tibetan capital of Lhasa. The violent protests were the biggest challenge to Chinese rule in the Himalayan region in nearly two decades. China has said 22 people were killed, while Tibetan groups have said many times that number died in the violence.
In May came China's worst train accident in a decade, leaving 72 dead and more than 400 injured when a high-speed passenger train jumped its tracks and slammed into another in rural Shandong province.
There is also a sharp rise in the number of reported cases of hand, foot, and mouth disease that has killed 39 children this year and infected nearly 30,000 others.
The bad news kept coming. This time it's the magnitude 7.9 earthquake that struck Sichuan province on 12 May, causing nearly 50,000 deaths to date. The suffering of Sichuan's inhabitants has been prolonged by repeated aftershocks. Aftershocks continue to shake Sichuan Province — including a 6.0 magnitude earthquake, the latest in a series of more than 4,400 tremors in less than a week. But it's the original magnitude 7.9 earthquake that hit Sichuan Province the hardest, shattering communities, levelling dozens of schools and burying transportation routes with landslides.
All these news left many to ponder why it all happened. As for me, I felt very sad, but every time as I read the news of one more survivor rescued, I can't help but let the tears of joy to fill up my emotion.
In a footage shows Premier Wen Jiabao was surrounded by grieving villagers, his arms tightly holding two young girls. "Your sorrow is our sorrow," he assures them. "As long as people are still alive, we can start all over". It is so touching. This disaster is terrible but the government is doing everything it can.
In one article, stated that the grief is compounded in many cases by a Chinese policy that limits most couples to one child, a measure meant to control explosive population growth. And as a result of the one-child policy, not only must thousands of parents suddenly cope with the loss of a child, but many must cope with the loss of their only child. This is devastating.
As a single mother to an only child, I can somehow understand the sorrows these parents would have to go through. No word can explain off such sorrows.
Oh God, please bring peace back to earth again.
www.mercycorps.org/earthquake