ZHOUQU, China, Aug 11, 2010 (AFP) - Xue Shengshe stares despondently at the measly five bread buns he managed to get from a food stall helping survivors of China's devastating mudslides. He also has two bottles of water.
"There are five people at home. This is not enough but they didn't have any more food to give me," Xue said, leaning against his dusty bicycle. Xue is one of the lucky ones in Zhouqu, where an avalanche of mud and rocks wiped out a portion of the northwestern town at the weekend, leaving more than 1,700 people dead or missing. His wife and children also survived, and his home is relatively intact, save for a few cracks in the wall. They are living there with his son's teacher. But they are among tens of thousands of people without adequate food or drinking water, and the remoteness of the area has hindered relief efforts. "Relief work is still at a critical stage and the situation for epidemic prevention work is still very grim," the head of the Gansu provincial health department, Liu Weizhong, told a press conference Wednesday.
Residents form long queues each day in front of food stalls at dinnertime, waiting patiently in line for pot noodles and mineral water. Cartons of instant noodles, bottled water and vegetables have trickled in slowly via the only two, small roads that lead into Zhouqu, which is nestled deep in the mountains. The sheer number of cars and trucks carrying relief materials on one of the winding roads heading into town, and the rescue vehicles heading out, has caused a huge traffic jam -- meaning supplies are not getting in. Some streets in Zhouqu are still so flooded that they look more like rivers, making travel by car an almost impossible task and leaving much-needed diggers stuck outside town. Volunteers and relief workers have taken it upon themselves to carry baskets of food and water on their backs, weaving through the stationary vehicles stuck in traffic to enter town and distribute it to those in need. "I do this more than 10 times a day," one woman, who would not give her name, told AFP as she trudged back up the road from Zhouqu with an empty basket on her back.
Some shops and businesses re-opened on Wednesday to help provide residents with food and water. One supermarket sold some of its wares -- including wet wipes and biscuits -- outside on the street. Doctors working in makeshift clinics said many residents had come looking for medicine to prevent diarrhoea, or with symptoms of heat stroke. "There is concern there could be a disease outbreak, but so far that hasn't happened," said one doctor from the provincial capital Lanzhou, who only gave his surname Chen. Yang Long, another doctor in Zhouqu, said he had treated several adults and children for diarrhoea, telling the China Daily: "We need more medicine." The health ministry said Tuesday that no major epidemics had been reported so far and experts had been sent to stave off any occurrence of water-borne disease. Teams of workers were spraying disinfectant throughout the town, where housing is another critical concern.
So far, more than 4,000 tents have been sent to the zone, but only dozens of them have been put up on the playgrounds of two schools because of the lack of safe ground. The mudslide has left many streets and open spaces filled with thick brown sludge, and on higher ground houses are built so close together that there is simply no space. "There are many tents but it's small here so there's nowhere to put them up," Liu Xiaohua, a 22-year-old volunteer whose aunt was killed in the disaster, told AFP.
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