I’m bumping this one back to the top this morning. The asterisks note the areas closest to the epicenter.

As I hear reports of individual orphanages or other programs I will report them here, as well as where I’ve seen the information.

• Aba: Unknown
• Chengdu: Safe, children are outside of the building due to aftershocks. When it rains they go into the institution’s bus. There are cracks in some (but not all) buildings. (HTS)
• Chongqing: Safe (HTS and an agency)
• *Deyang: Children are safe, minor damage to building (LWB)
• *Dujiangyan: Unknown
• Fuling, Chongqing: Children are okay, no damage to current building. New building that is still under construction and not occupied sustained structural damage. (Parent)
• Fungdu: Safe (Parent)
• *Guanghan: Unknown
• Ganzizhou: Unknown
• Hanzhong City SWI, Shaanxi Province: Children are safe, staying outside of building due to aftershocks. There are reports that the buildings sustained significant damage. There are tents set up for now. It is unknown if the buildings can be repaired or if they will need to be rebuilt. (Parent)
Liangping SWI : Safe (Parent)
• Leshan: Unknown
• Luzhou: Unknown
Mama’s Wish: Teachers and students safe (LWB)
• *Mianyang: Safe, staying outside due to aftershocks. (Parent)
• Nanchong #1 and #2: Both safe (Agency)
• Nanchuan, Chongqing: Safe, no damage reported. (LWB)
• Neijiang: Unknown
• Panzhihua: Unknown
• Rongxian: Unknown
• Santai County: Unknown
• Suining: Unknown
• Wenjiang County: Unknown
• Xiushan, Chongqing: Safe, no damage reported. (LWB)
• Yibin: Safe (HTS)
• Yunyang, Chongqing: Safe. No damage to the building. (LWB)
• Zhaotong Foster Care program, Yunnan: Safe (LWB)
• Zigong: Unknown
• *Zitong County: Unknown

I’ve seen people concerned about other orphanages within the Sichuan province, so I’ll address those as well:

• The Guang’an institute seems to be far enough away that they should be fine. Also, it is near the Nanchong institutes, which are fine.
• We know Yibin is safe, and Luzhou is near Yibin and also far from the quake zone so is also likely safe.
• Guangyuan also seems to be far enough away that they should be safe.
• Leshan is on the other side of Chengdu, which is safe, so Leshan should also be safe.

I will note that until we hear from the “should be okay” orphanages then we don’t know for sure. There are scattered deaths in the other provinces, many of which appear to be kind of freaky things that happened, scattered incidences, like the water tower falling. It is likely that those orphanages are safe, but I’m sure we’ll have word from them as soon as communication is up. Most parent groups for the orphanages seem to have someone who can contact the orphanage directly, so if you hear that your child’s orphanage is safe, please let me know. I’ll make a note to the side that the news comes from a parent, no names given. The same goes if your agency verifies that an orphanage is okay, I’ll just make a note to the side that the news comes from an agency.

Original Post date May 13, 2008 @ 10:38 am

I had over 200 emails to go through, though unfortunately a lot of people just sent in that they didn’t have the information I was asking for, so it took a lot longer to go through the information than I had anticipated. I ended up with 80 data points.

I did not have enough data for December 2007 or any of 2008. I had some data, but not enough to reliably use, I don’t think. Also, ignore the Percent of Total column for now, I’ll explain it later in this post.

The total attrition rate is now almost 25%. That means that one out of every four people who started the process are no longer waiting for a NSN child.

Some of the individual month numbers are truly heartbreaking. Forty percent of the people who started the process in a couple of months pulled out for one reason or another before they will get their referral. Almost half. I hope that most of them found another path to parenthood and didn’t just give up.

What does this does this do to the backlog? Possibly not very much. If most of those 25% have switched to SN then many of them are conceivably still waiting for LOA or TA, so they may (or may not) still be in the backlog. If they are not still in the backlog then we’ve moved from somewhere around 27,000 dossiers to around 20,000 dossiers. But I don’t think that’s the case just yet.

No hard numbers for this next bit, but I’m guessing that around 3/4 of the people pulling out of the NSN program are going to the SN program. Which means that about a quarter of them are probably not in line anymore. And if half of of the SN families are home and no longer waiting… oh, lets just say that the current backlog might be closer 24,000 right now. But that’s not a hard figure at all, just a guesstimate of what attrition may have done to the backlog.

We should also do a side by side comparison of the last time we did this.

It isn’t pretty, is it? Eighteen percent for this time period has grown to 25% over all. And look at July through September of ‘06, it grew from twenty percent to thirty six percent.

And finally, about the extra column in the first graphic, the one labeled Percent of Total. That column doesn’t tell us anything at all about the attrition rate. It tells us about the size of that month, the total numbers of people who are left waiting. It’s another gauge for how big months are in relation to the months around them. Is it accurate? I don’t know. My guess is that the polling data is probably more accurate than this, but I figured the information for myself so I figured I’d just leave that column on so you all could see it as well.

As I reported yesterday, HTS (Half the Sky) reports that they have had contact with the Chengdu, Chongqing and Yibin orphanages and that all is well. The children were all evacuated until the tremors passed, the buildings suffered no great damage, and no children were injured. This morning they note that the children have once again been removed from the Chengdu orphanage due to the aftershocks.

Half the Sky reports that they will be working with The Ministry of Civil Affairs to help the children impacted by the earthquake. They already have a working relationship with the MoCA, and it turns out that the MoCA is responsible for disaster relief as well as being over the CCAA.

Neither the MoCA nor HTS have been able to reach the orphanages in the most affected areas: Mianyang, Zitong, Deyang and Aba. They report that each of those four institutions house about 100 children.

Jenny Bowen at HTS notes that help for children may well be needed outside welfare institutions, and they have been given assurance by the MoCA that they will be able to deliver aid where it is most desperately needed. They intend to help provide temporary and long term care to the children affected, including emergency shelter, food, and medical care for children orphaned or separated from their families. They have set up an Earthquake Fund, if you’d like to help them then go to their website: http://www.halfthesky.org/

LWB (Love without Boundaries) is also involved and is posting updates about individual programs as they get the information. As of now they report that the children at the Deyang SWI are safe and that there was minor damage to the building. They say that the Mama’s Wish teachers and students have all been accounted for and are safe. Also, all of the children in the Zhaotong Foster Care program are safe. They have a disaster relief fund set up as well.

Please scroll to the bottom of this post for updates.

A magnitued 7.4 or 7.6 or 7.8 (preliminary numbers at this point, but still big, no matter what) quake hit China last night, in Sichuan province. News reports say that there is no serious damage in the provincial capital of Chengdu.

They are reporting that cellular service has been disrupted. Knowing how communication channels work in China, I’m betting the land phones and internet are probably spotty as well. Which means that if you’ve got a friend or loved one there and you haven’t heard from them and can’t reach them, that is probably why.

The news reports say the quake struck 93 kilometers from Chengdu, which is around 58 miles, so anyone there likely got quite a ride from it.

Other news reports say that the Chengdu airport is closed, and flights are being rerouted to the Chongqing airport.

While there are reports of it being felt pretty strongly as far away as Beijing and Shanghai, so far I’ve only seen reports of damage in the Sichuan province and Chongqing municipality.

Here are some eyewitness reports from some of the surrounding provinces.

The sad news right now is that of the schools collapsing, and of the school that was buried by mud, and of the collapsing watertower. There will probably be more bad news as the news begins to find its way out of the area, but I really hope not.

I’m guessing that Half the Sky will have some sort of update at some point about the state of the orphanages in those areas, they seem to be pretty on the ball about that kind of thing. If anyone sees them reporting on it, please let me know.

Also, if we have any families in the area it would be nice to hear how they are. I doubt they can get to the internet, but if anyone hears from someone please let us know about it.

——————–

9:00 Update:

There are now damage reports in Sichuan, Gansu and Yunnan provinces as well as in the municipality of Chongqing

Chengdu has power and water outages as well as communication problems. An underground water pipe ruptured near the city’s southern railway station and the immediate area is flooded. There are report of buildings with cracks in their walls but so far no reports of collapses.

—————-
10:45 Update

I’m trying to report the stuff that isn’t on the news. We all know of the school collapses and the mudslides, I’m trying to give information that isn’t hitting the mainstream news so much.

Reports now have the magnitude at 7.8 or 8.0.

There are some reports of cracked buildings that have been evacuated in Chongching municipality.

Estimates of a death toll are now at three to five thousand in some reports and as high as 10,000 in other reports.

The epicenter was in Wenchuan county in Sichuan province. There are some pictures out there of collapsed buildings in Wenchuan county. I won’t point to them here, as most of them show bodies.

The water tower that collapsed was in Mianyang, in Santai county

There have been 44 aftershocks so far, and rain is predicted for the area. Most people are staying outside right now, out of buildings that could be unsafe.

There are also reports of fatalities in Beichaun county, where it is reported 80% of the buildings have collapsed.

—————-

11:10 Update

Fatalities also reported in Dujiangyan City.

Wenchuan County, the epicenter, is home to the Wolong Nature Reserve, China’s leading research and breeding base for endangered giant pandas. (In case someone has been there, you’ll know that’s where this is.)

Public transportation in Chengdu is said to be operational.

Electricity and water are said to be fine in the city of Chongching.

Eyewitness report of Canadians from Chengdu, seems to be okay where they are: http://www.thestar.com/News/World/article/424499

——–

11:30 Update

Two chemical plants were damaged and the areas around them have been evacuated. This is in Shifeng, about 30 miles from the epicenter of the quake.

It is also being reported that the trembling felt in Beijing was from a second 3.9 quake located in the eastern part of Beijing. I don’t believe that’s been decided for sure yet, though.

Death toll is now reported at 7,600 for Sichuan province.

USGS list of quakes and aftershocks: http://earthquake.usgs.gov/eqcenter/recenteqsww/Maps/region/Asia_eqs.php

———-

12:50 Update

After the country was paralyzed by the snow storms in February the leadership was criticized for a Katrina-like slowness in dealing with the problem. There is now prominent coverage of officials responding immediately to this disaster. Premier Wen Jiabao is in Sichuan. He gave a televised speech as he was flying to Sichuan on Monday. He said the Central Committee of China’s ruling Communist Party and the state cabinet had ordered party members and officials at all levels ‘work on the front line’ of disaster relief.

Wen Jiaobao stated he will be in charge of the relief work headquarters that has been set up with eight State Council departments.

More than 5,000 PLA (Peoples Liberation Army) officers and soldiers, and 3,000 police are being rushed to effected areas to assist and lead the rescue efforts.

There are reports that five schools have collapsed in Deyang city in Sichuan.

Death toll is now reported as “more than 8,500 in Sichuan province.”

The only way into the epicenter areas are by helicopter at this point. Roads are not passable and bridges are gone.

Sichuan has about 40 percent of China’s natural gas reserves and produces about 22 percent of the nation’s output. PetroChina is not yet reporting damage to any of the fields in the earthquake zone, but it may be too early for that kind of information.

Ford, Honda, and Nissan all have factories in Sichuan. At this time none are reporting damage to their factories.

WalMart in Chengdu is closed and will be closed tomorrow as well (it’s midnight there now). Items were knocked off of the shelves and must be put back. Also, the power and water supply is out to the store.

Since it is the middle of the night now, I don’t expect we’ll get much more new information until later tonight (morning in China).

USGS Info:
Map: http://earthquake.usgs.gov/eqcenter/recenteqsww/Maps/10/105_30.php
List: http://earthquake.usgs.gov/eqcenter/recenteqsww/Maps/10/105_30_eqs.php

————-

1:50 Update

Besides the “more than 8500″ deaths listed in Sichuan, the national disaster relief headquarters reports 48 killed in northwestern Gansu province, 50 in the municipality of Chongqing, 57 in Shaanxi province, and one in southwestern Yunnan, according to Xinhua.

At least one of the two chemical plants in Shifang city (that were mentioned above) completely collapsed. Estimates are that it sent more than 80 tons of toxic liquid ammonia into the air.

The U.S. Consulate in Chengdu had no apparent damage. No one is injured and all are accounted for.

Wenchuan, the county where the epicenter is located, has a population of 111,800.

——————

6:00 pm Update

LWB (Love Without Boundaries) is reported to be checking on some schools that they work with in the earthquake areas. I haven’t heard any news yet, though.

HTS (Half the Sky) reports that they have had contact with the Chengdu, Chongqing and Yibin orphanages and that all is well. The children were all evacuated until the tremors passed, the buildings suffered no great damage, and no children were injured. Half the Sky will reach out to other orphanages in the area today (our tonight).

May everyone have a wonderful Mother’s Day today.

My girls started showering me with extra attention yesterday, and today promises to be even better.

Today I get to honor my mother while having my girls show me how much they love me.

I know how hard the day can be for those waiting. I’m sorry. Maybe try to do something you won’t be able to do once you have a child at home? A day of very loud sex. Or a day of movies you couldn’t take kids to. I know, it’s not the ideal, but the day is what you make of it, right?