COVERITLIVE.COM

11:00

Charles Holmes - Hello from NPR and welcome to a live chat with All Things Considered Host Melissa Block and producer Andrea Hsu from Chengdu, China. They look forward to your questions, though Andrea is dealing with preparing a radio piece right now, so she may not able to join us until later.

Let's get started .... And I'll ask the first question.

It's been a year since you visited the earthquake zone. What's the most surprising thing you've encountered? Anything you didn't expect?

11:02

Melissa Block -

Hi, everybody, and thanks for joining us.

I'm certainly surprised by the pace of rebuilding. The message from the top ranks of government on down is 'speed it up!' and that's what many people are doing, reconstructing their homes. I'm also jolted by the sheer numbers of people affected. you see it most vividly when you drive around Sichuan and everywhere you go you see acres and acres of prefab barracks for people left homeless. This earthquake covered such a huge zone; the full scope is really hard to take in.

11:04

Charles Holmes - I'm sure it is both fascinating and difficult to witness. That leads us to a good question from a Facebook user. Gabrielle Ferreira askes:

What were your first thoughts after the earthquake hit? Also how are the conditions there. How "normal" is it? Are schools and town buildings up and running?

11:06

Melissa Block - I'm not sure my brain was fully functioning when the earthquake hit. I've never been in an earthquake before, and I think the mind naturally wants to steer clear of assuming the worst. So my first thoughts were, "gosh the building is shaking. That must be a very big truck going by." Then as we ran outside and I realized the ground was heaving and buildings were shaking and debris was falling and everyone was running into the street, it dawned on me pretty quickly what was going on. If you've heard our audio from the earthquake, you'll hear me say "oh my goodness" (an understatement if I've ever uttered one) - "is this an earthquake? we're in an earthquake?"

11:07

Charles Holmes -

I can't imagine. Is there a sense of normalcy there now?

11:08

Melissa Block - Normal is hard to define right now. Schools got going pretty quickly, first in tent cities, then in the prefab barracks I described earlier. But there's so much dislocation: a lot of kids have been sent to "relocation schools", often many miles and many hours away from their families. A lot of what's functional depends on where you are: cities and towns may be fairly close together, but a town up in the mountains will be way worse off than a town 10 miles away on flat ground.

11:08

[Comment From Rob Sheridan]
Hi Ms. Block and Ms. Hsu, i would like to know whether you have seen much charitable activity from religious groups in the region, or whether all of the response to the calamity and the subsequent reconstruction were handles exclusively by the government?

11:11

Melissa Block - There is a fair amount of charitable work in the region, though I couldn't quantify that for you. Some groups were here more for immediate assistance right after the quake. Others are here for the long term. Yesterday on ATC I profiled a small US nonprofit group called Build Change, that's here helping people build earthquake-resistant homes. They're not paying for the reconstruction, though; those subsidies are comng from the government, and people have to get loans and use savings to cover the rest. I know Chinese charitable groups organized right away and sent a lot of aid to the region. I'm not sure how much of that is still ongoing.

11:11

Charles Holmes -

Ben Tsai asks an interesting follow-up: What needs are not being met?

11:11

[Comment From Ben Tsai]
How much of the aid has come from the government vs "grassroots" efforts by locals vs outside aid? What needs are not being met?

Page 1 Next >