Disappeared News: Time is life

Thursday, January 14, 2010

Time is life

by Larry Geller

Of course, the attention of the whole world is focused on the Haiti earthquake and providing relief in some way. I was impressed by how fast China moved. Googling around in Chinese, it seems they really did take note of the seismic data and scrambled immediately.

This text appeared on several blogs and news sites:

《新京报》发表评论说，中国对此反应速度如此之快，这恐怕得益于中国对地震的痛苦回忆。

"Beijing News" commented that China has responded so rapidly, this may be due to painful memories of China's earthquake.

无论是唐山、还是汶川大地震，都让我们知道了时间就是生命，也让我们知道了大规模的自然灾害会如此沉痛地伤害一个社会、触痛一个国家。

Whether Tangshan, or the Wenchuan earthquake, have let us know the time is life, let us also know that a large-scale natural disasters, is so deeply hurt a community, tenderness a country.

There is also a theory I found that since Haiti and China are polar opposites (is that true? I don’t have a globe…), an earthquake in one place may affect the other. In other words, some kind of seismic wave bouncing through or maybe around the planet to the opposite point. It is only a theory, not yet supported by data. So they are wondering if there will be some effect someplace in China from the Haiti earthquake.

I was also wondering at first about the video which I linked to in the earlier post. Why are they wearing helmets and so forth while getting ready to fly off on a rescue mission? But actually, when I lived in Japan, I noticed the Japanese did the same thing. I don’t know why, but at least it may not be strange that they did it. The scramble to get vehicles and equipment ready is also the same as in Japan, where they are pretty good at earthquake response. Everyone really does rush and run around. Indeed, time is life. Those first 72 hours are said to be crucial to save lives.

Not to be flip about this, but I think the Chinese response was faster than FEMA’s when Katrina hit. That’s neither here nor there, but California officials might want to get to know their Chinese counterparts just in case.