Wenchuan Earthquake Disaster Resilience in the Rural and Regional Cities - Case Study Example

Sichuan Province, China (2008 Wenchuan Earthquake) Disaster Resilience in the Rural and Regional Cities [Insert name] September 19, 2013 Sichuan Province, China (2008 Wenchuan Earthquake) Disaster Resilience in the Rural ssand Regional Cities The case study will be on magnitude 8.0 earthquake which occurred on May 12, 2008 and struck Wenchuan County which is located in the Sichuan province in China, which is about 80km from the provincial capital, Chengdu. China is not characterized by large earthquakes and the earthquake of this magnitude was unexpected in China. This essay will discuss the 2008 Wenchuan earthquake, the argument that there is no such thing as a natural disaster in relation to the impacts of the disaster on the population. As a result of the earthquake, about 69,227 died, while 374,643 were injured, 17, 923 were reported missing and 4.8 million were rendered homeless. The affected area can be approximated to be 440,442km2, entailing one autonomous region and three provinces. However, people living as far as Beijing also felt the quack. This quake is regarded as the deadliest and the strongest which hit China since 1976 (State Council Information Office of the People’s Republic of China, 2008). According to Comerio, (1997, p. 165), there are about four key aspects in the making of disasters that are together simultaneously social and natural. However, it is important to point out that the causes are the key natural part of the tragedy. For instance the 2008 Wenchuan earthquake was caused by two northwest-dipping surface ruptures on the Longmenshan thrust nappe tectonic zone which is on the Tibetan plateau eastern edge: the Guanxian-Jiangyou and Beichuan-Yingxiu rupture, which both imbricate thrust faults that produced falling waters, cracks, earthquakes and other forms of ruptures that ran north along the central faults to regions such as Muyu and Qingchuan, hence forming a distinct and continuous rupture zone. The key aspects will support the argument that the disaster was not entirely natural as human actions such as lack of preparedness and poor structures was partly responsible for the huge loss of lives and property damage. Hence the impacts of the disaster, which will be discussed in the paragraphs that follow will be based on the same. Scholars need to be carefully with the term natural that give the suggestion that disaster is not a human phenomenon and that it is only the process of hydrosphere, lithosphere or atmosphere (Wang et al, 2009, 445). However, Dunford (2011, p.40) in his argument points out that a natural disaster has a close connection with human action. Despite, natural phenomena being the main causes of natural disasters, it cannot be argued that they are responsible for the disastrous events for the exposed population created by the events. Dunford (2011, p.42) emphasizes human responsibility in natural disasters including earthquakes, even if human beings have nothing to do with the causes of the events, in most cases, their decisions play a major role in the disasters. Mitigation is essential in protecting the lives of individuals in case of a disaster and the focus should be on actual objects or structures. According to Chang et al (2011, p. 78) in attempting to prevent the disaster from causing damage, pertaining to earthquakes, it is impossible to reduce the force of the event, however the environment can be built in such a manner that can withstand the impacts of the ground shaking. In regard to the mentioned, it can be argued that the Wenchuan earthquake is not mainly a natural disaster, because dealing with seismic events need mitigation to ensure that structures do not collapse and kill people in the event of a disaster. Mitigation is the key tenet in disaster management, mitigation aims at preventing a natural disaster from turning into a catastrophe the way (Comerio, 1997, p. 167). In most cases, mitigation focuses on structures, but it is important in preventing the loss of human lives. Therefore, it is important to take actions prior to a disaster in order to ensure satisfactory response to the recovery and relief of the consequences of the disaster. Moreover, as crucial is the vulnerability of the population that is struck by the disaster. According to Wang et al (2009, p. 444). Vulnerability is the degree at which a social group or an individual is susceptible to loss of livelihood or life as a result of a certain adverse event. Essentially, vulnerability can be attenuated or accentuated via human action, an aspect that makes it to be argued that disasters are not natural. In regard to the argument that no disaster is natural, let us examine the impacts of the earthquake on the population. The earthquake greatly impacted on the housing. The epicenter of the earthquake was in the Wenchuan County. According to Dunford (2011, p.40) about 15 million houses collapsed an aspect that made direct losses to infrastructure to amount to more than USD 150 billion. Additionally, the earthquake devastated the 7,444 schools, 1,263 reservoirs, 11,028 medical institutions as well as numerous rural and urban factories and residents making the direct losses to total up to approximately USD 123.66 billion (State Council Information Office of the People’s Republic of China, 2008).Hence, in this particular earthquake, housing was the greatest component of all the losses incurred in terms of building damaged as well as economic value. It is evident that the damages on the structures during the Wenchuan earthquake was mainly contingent on the type of the construction and therefore, it can be argued that there is no such thing as a natural disaster. For instance in Sichuan province mountain terrain, a high percentage of the housing building were two or one Storey masonry structures made of concrete blocks or bricks and lacked seismic-resistant elements (Dunford, 2011, p.41). The mentioned made the housing to be vulnerable to earthquake and most of them collapsed during the earthquake. For example, in the affected cities and towns, at the foot of the Chengdu plain, such as Mianzhu, Shifang, Dujiangyan and Pengzhou, most of the buildings were neither designed properly nor constructed with adequate provision so as to withstand earthquake and hence prevent earthquake. Electric power: the earthquake negatively affected the electric power supply in the disaster area and it was only Chengdu that had no outage of power supply. The outage lasted for about 10 to 20 days while the remote areas experienced the longest outages due to difficulty in accessing the places in order to repair the damage (Comerio, 1997, p. 166). Coal fire, hydro and electric power generation plans not only sustained damaged but also remained out of service for about 60 days after the earthquake (Zhobao, 2010, p. 78). Additionally, most substations particularly in the remote towns such as Wenchuan, Yingxiu and Beichuan were extremely damaged. Both the transmission and distribution were damaged by rock falls and landslides. The earthquake greatly interfered with telecommunication. The wireless and the landlines were affected in three main ways: damage to the distribution system, the equipment (figure 1) and the electric power outage. In the mountain areas, the population depended on wireless service as their main means of communication. As a result of prolonged electric power outage, the cells which the earthquake did not damage also ran out reserve within 2-4 hours. Figure 1 Furthermore, landslides destroyed various wired connection between the cells causing failure in outgoing and incoming calls (Chang et al, 2011, p. 78). Additionally, the cellular phones ran out of power an aspect that worsened the situation. Thus repairing the damage was challenging as a result of the major rock falls and land falls preventing an aspect that prevented access to the damaged areas (Dunford, 2011, p.40). Consequently, the service providers were unable to bring personnel and materials for repair before the military cleared the place. On transportation, about 30000 miles of railways and rods, 100 tunnels and 3,000 bridges as well as miles of retaining structures were destroyed by the earthquake. The transport sector incurred loss which can be approximated at US $10 billion (State Council Information Office of the People’s Republic of China, 2008). On the disaster day, about 149 cargo and 31 passenger trains were stranded on the lines that link Chengdu to the rest of the country. According to government statistics, the number of death of students as a result of the earthquake stood at 19,065, translating to a quarter of the earthquake victims translating to be children and about 7,000 were destroyed by the earthquake (State Council Information Office of the People’s Republic of China, 2008). During the disaster, some schools were completely flattened while the surrounding buildings were hardly damaged (Department of Education, Sichuan province, 2009). In Hanwang, approximately 700 students were buried while in Juyuan elementary school about 600 staff and students died and in Beichuan Middle School about 1,300 teachers and children died (Chang et al, 2011, p. 80). Despite the earthquake being a natural disaster, there are a number of human factors that resulted into the disastrous impacts. The population density of Sichuan is so high. It has a population of around 84 million in an area of about 480000km. sq (Xinhua News Agency, 2008). Consequently, the population was characterized by low social awareness particularly on education. For instance, Wenchuan had only 42 institutions of high learning and about 25,000 teachers (Department of Education, Sichuan province, 2009). Hence, the proportion of students that were likely to receive quality education was low even if they were taken to school, they could fail to be taught on what to do in case of a disaster, before and after the disaster particularly about earthquakes. From the discussions above, it is evident that Wenchuan earthquake being a natural disaster, human actions too contributed to the immense loss of human lives and property. Housing, transportation, and communication among other social amenities incurred loss mainly as a result of lack of preparedness. For instance the China government lacked efficient warning/monitoring systems. This made it impossible to predict the place and time of the earthquake occurrence accurately. Hence the natural disaster turned out to be a man- made disaster because the government was unable to warn people to move to safer places. References Asian Development Bank (ADB). (2008). People’s Republic of China: Providing emergency response to Sichuan earthquake. ADB Technical assistance Consultant’s Report, Project 42150. Manila: ADB. Chang, Y. et al (2011). An integrated approach: managing resources for post-disaster reconstruction. Oxford: Blackwell publishing. Comerio, M.C. (1997) ‘Housing issues after disasters’. Journal of Contingencies and Crisis Management.5(3). pp. 166–178. Department of Education, Sichuan province (2009). 5335 students were confirmed dead or missing in Wenchuan earthquake by May 7, 2009. http://www.gov.cn/jrzg/2009- 05/07/content_1306695.htm. Accessed Sep 19, 2013. Dunford, M. (2011) earthquake construction in Wenchuan: assessing the state overall plan and addressing the forgotten phase. Applied geography 31-998-1009. 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