Natural disaster, earthquakes, tornadoes, wildfires, etc.

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Millions affected by Nargis...

2.5 million affected by cyclone - UN
May 15, 2008 * UN calls donor and Asian states to talks * Junta still won't allow aid workers in * US emergency flights to continue for now

THE UN has estimated the number of people affected by the Burma cyclone at up to 2.5 million and has called an urgent meeting of big donors and Asian states as the Burma junta continues to limit foreign aid. The European Union's top aid official said the military Government's restrictions were increasing the risk of starvation and disease.

UN humanitarian affairs chief John Holmes said there were now between 1.6 million and 2.5 million people who were "severely affected" by Cyclone Nargis and urgently needed aid, up from a previous estimate of at least 1.5 million people.

In New York, UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, who has expressed frustration over the response by Burma's reclusive leaders, met key donor states and Asian powers to discuss "what kind of concrete measures we can do from now on".

"Even though the Myanmarese Government has shown some sense of flexibility, at this time it is far, far too short," he said. "The magnitude of this situation requires much more mobilisation of resources and aid workers." Among those invited were the US, Britain, France, Russia, China, India, Bangladesh, Australia and Japan.

Trickle of aid

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Ban calls Burma emergency talks
May 15, 2008 : UN chief Ban Ki-moon has called an emergency meeting on Burma's aid crisis, as the junta refused to open up to a full-scale relief effort despite grave fears for two million survivors.

The secretary-general said he would call in representatives of several countries later today to discuss a strategy for escalating the humanitarian response in Burma, with relief groups warning they are running out of time. Mr Ban said too much time had been spent on trying to deliver supplies and obtain visas for international aid workers whose expertise is urgently needed to bring help to the remote and flooded disaster zone in the south.

"Even though the Myanmar (Burmese) government has shown some sense of flexibility, at this time it's far, far too short," he said in New York. "The magnitude of this situation requires much more mobilisation of resources and aid workers," he said.

Mr Ban said the operation to help the Burmese people was entering its "second stage", reflecting views that almost two weeks after the storm hit, it may already be too late for many sick and hungry victims who have got little aid from a government that insists it can manage the catastrophe alone.

More Ban calls Burma emergency talks | NEWS.com.au

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China's Misery Grows With 15,000 Dead, 26,000 Entombed and 14,000 Missing...

Remarkable Rescues as Quake Death Toll Rises
May 14, 2008 - Rescue Teams Close In on the Epicenter of China's Earthquake; Helicopters drop aid to earthquake survivors; remarkable rescue buoys searchers.

It wasn't until they reached Yingxiu that it became clear how nightmarish it was. Chinese rescue workers arrived on foot for the first time since Monday afternoon's earthquake at the town where 10,000 people used to live. Today, they discovered, it has a population of only 2,300. Everyone else is dead. Across central China today military helicopters began dropping food and aid workers started to reach the hardest-hit villages, areas that had been isolated because roads had been wiped away in the three-minute-long, magnitude 7.9 earthquake.

The more villages are reached, the scale of devastation escalates for China's worst natural disaster in more than 30 years. The ever increasing death toll now officially stands at 14,866, according to Xinhua, China's state news agency. The vice governor of Sichuan province, the area worst hit by the quake, reported today that in his province 25,788 people were still buried. China's news agency reported that more than 14,000 people are missing.

Around the epicenter, schools and even factories were not built to withstand the ground shaking so violently. A countless number of them lie in ruins. Buildings that used to stand tall are now no more than 5-feet-high heaps of rubble and wrenched steel. Across those towns, you can hear it before you see it. Aid workers yelling and pounding the rubble, a tireless search for the living, for the tens of thousands of people who have become invisible residents of these cities, holding on to life under piles of debris. A rescuer in Chengdu, sifting through rubble and twisted metal, suddenly turns and yells. "Come on, send a doctor immediately!" She gestures toward a survivor. "One of her legs is jammed between the walls." It's a child who has been trapped for two days, no food and no water.

More ABC News: China's Misery Grows With 15,000 Dead, 26,000 Entombed and 14,000 Missing

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Myanmar cyclone toll estimates soar...

Red Cross raises cyclone death toll to as high as 128000
15 May,`08 - U.N., aid agencies say cyclone death toll could surpass 100,000; Weather reports say there is no risk of a second cyclone; British Prime Minister Gordon Brown calls for emergency summit on cyclone disaster

The death toll from a killer cyclone in Myanmar could be "in the region of 100,000 or even more," the chief of the United Nations Humanitarian Affairs said Wednesday. John Holmes, U.N. under-secretary general for humanitarian affairs, said his organization already has confirmed 38,491 deaths -- much more than the 22,000 figure from Myanmar's government.

The weather forecast, meanwhile, calls for rain in the next several days in Myanmar, which is also known as Burma. That could cause flooding in low-lying areas that already are saturated with water left when Cyclone Nargis slammed into the country on May 2. In another development Thursday, Myanmar's government announced that a military-backed constitution was overwhelmingly approved by voters in last week's referendum, The Associated Press reported.

State radio said Thursday that the draft constitution was approved by more than 92 percent of the 22 million eligible voters. It put turnout at more than 99 percent, AP reported. Human rights groups have denounced the referendum as a way for the junta to solidify military rule. Aid agencies have struggled to gain access to the country from the secretive military junta that rules Myanmar, though some relief flights have arrived this week. The regime has indicated that it would like supplies but not international aid workers. That lack of access makes it hard to bring the scale of destruction into sharp focus.

MORE

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Probably a conservative estimate...

China says earthquake toll could top 50,000
Thurs., May. 15, 2008 - Government issues a rare public appeal for rescue equipment

The death toll from China's massive earthquake could reach more than 50,000, the official Xinhua news agency reported on Thursday, quoting rescue headquarters. Already some 20,000 are confirmed dead as a result of Monday's 7.9 magnitude quake, and at least 12,300 people remained buried and another 102,100 were injured in Sichuan province, where the quake was centered, the vice governor told reporters.

China earlier issued a rare public appeal for rescue equipment as rescue workers broke through key roads to the epicenter in the race to find survivors. More than 72 hours after the quake rattled central China, rescuers appeared to shift from poring through downed buildings for survivors to the grim duty of searching for bodies — with 10 million directly affected by Monday’s temblor.

In Luoshui town — on the road to an industrial zone in Shifang city where two chemical plants collapsed, burying hundreds of people — troops used a mechanical shovel to dig a pit on a hilltop to bury the dead. Two bodies wrapped in white sheets lay near the pit.

Bodies laid on sidewalk

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Myanmar Cyclone Death Toll Nears 80,000
May 16, 2008 : Figure Is Nearly Double That Of The Junta's Estimate; U.N. To Conduct Fact-Finding Mission

State television reports the official death toll from Myanmar's devastating cyclone earlier this month has climbed to 77,738. The figure was broadcast Friday night. It was nearly double the figure released a day earlier by the military government. The official count for the missing also soared to 55,917 - from a figure of 27,838 that had been announced for the past few days. The International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies estimated Wednesday that the total death toll may be as many as 128,000. The U.N. has said more than 100,000 may have died. The U.N. and the Red Cross say 1.6 million to 2.5 million people are in urgent need of food, water and shelter.

John Holmes, U.N. undersecretary-general for humanitarian affairs, will go to Myanmar on Sunday to try to convince junta leaders to grant more access for U.N. relief workers and massively scale up aid efforts, said Amanda Pitt, a U.N. spokeswoman in Bangkok, Thailand. Officials of various U.N. agencies called a news conference in Bangkok to give an update on their relief operations. The most basic data was missing, from the number of orphans to the extent of diseases and the number of refugee camps.

They also couldn't say whether all survivors are in camps, on the move or still living in destroyed villages in the hardest-hit Irrawaddy delta, an area the size of Austria. Cyclone Nargis also pounded Yangon, Myanmar's main city. "The risk increases with each passing day," Pitt said, referring to the vulnerability of survivors to outbreaks of disease and other problems.

More Myanmar Cyclone Death Toll Nears 80,000, Figure Is Nearly Double That Of The Junta's Estimate; U.N. To Conduct Fact-Finding Mission - CBS News

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U.S. to bypass junta to get aid to Myanmar...

U.S. sends aid through private groups in Myanmar
16 May,`08 WASHINGTON -- Shipments distributed by non-governmental organizations, U.S. official said; Myanmar's ruling military junta is reluctant to allow outsiders in to distribute aid; The United States continues to push for greater access to Myanmar; U.S. aid may have reached 135,000 of 2.5 million people needing aid, officials say

After concerns that Myanmar authorities improperly took some previous relief supplies, Myanmar is now allowing U.S. government aid workers to give aid directly to private aid groups. State Department spokesman Sean McCormack said Friday there have been questions about whether supplies have reached victims of the cyclone that ravaged the southern part of the nation two weeks ago. "We are doing our best to make sure that what is delivered in Yangon makes it down to the affected areas to those who need it," he said at his midday briefing in Washington. "Given the current circumstances, you can't construct a perfect system for doing that."

"We have four C-130 relief flights that landed in Yangon today. Two of the shipments were handed over directly to NGOs," he said, using the shorthand for non-governmental organizations, or private relief groups. "That is the first time that has happened."

"The aid will be distributed via the Emerson Trust, I think it's about 100,000 tons; and about 400,000 via the World Food Programme. And representatives from Emerson and World Food Programme will be able to travel to affected areas," he said.

Myanmar's ruling military junta has been reluctant to allow outsiders in to supervise the distribution of aid, although they have loosened their restrictions in the past week to allow more access by NGOs. "We are planning four to five flights for both Saturday and Sunday and it is our hope that some of those shipments again will be handed over directly to international NGOs for distribution in affected areas," McCormack said.

More U.S. sends aid through private groups in Myanmar - CNN.com

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China's one-child policy causes pain...

China's one-child policy causes extra pain
May. 16, 2008 : Grief, anger engulf parents whose only child perished in 7.9-earthquake

Bi Kaiwei and his wife, Meilin, stopped having children after their daughter was born, taking to heart China's one-child policy and its slogan "Have fewer kids, live better lives." For them and other couples who lost an only child in this week's massive earthquake, the tragedy has been doubly cruel. Robbed of their sole progeny and a hope for the future, they find it even harder to restart their shattered lives, haunted by added guilt, regret and gnawing loss.

"She died before becoming even a young adult," said Bi, an intense, wiry chemical plant worker, standing beside the grave of 13-year-old Yuexing — one of dozens sprinkled amid fields of ripened spring wheat and newly planted rice. "She never really knew what life was like."

Yuexing, a bright sixth-grader, was in school when Monday's quake struck, bringing the Fuxin No. 2 Primary School crashing down, killing her and 200 other students. Teachers had locked all but one of the school's doors during break time, parents said, leaving only a single door to escape through.

A couple's only child

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Burmese begging for relief...

In Myanmar, people line up for miles to beg for aid
17 May 2008, The rows of beggars on either side of the road stretched for miles, twin columns of human misery left by the winds and waves of Cyclone Nargis.

Without clothes or shoes, the thousands of men, women and children made destitute by the cyclone could only stand in the mud and rain of the latest tropical downpour, their hands clasped together in supplication at the occasional passing aid vehicle. Any car that did stop was mobbed by children, their grimy hands reaching through a window in search of bits of bread or a t-shirt. The desperate entreaties expose the fragility of the claims by Myanmar's military government to be on top of the distribution of emergency relief in the worst-hit Irrawaddy delta, where up to 2.5 million people are now clinging to survival.

They also make all the more questionable the reclusive junta's refusal to admit large-scale foreign aid operations and the workers to run them. That refusal is motivated by fear the operations might threaten the generals' grip on power in a country that has known only military rule for the last 46 years, critics say. Aid volunteers were shocked by the roadside scenes, which suggest conditions in the delta are deteriorating rapidly with what little rice and food that could be salvaged from the ruins of inundated villages now running out. "The situation has worsened in just two days. There weren't this many desperate people when we were last here," a relief volunteer said.

In the town of Kunyangon, 60 miles from Yangon, the situation was little better, even though the former Burma's military rulers have started distributing small amounts of emergency food there. With almost total distrust of the government, private aid is being left in the care of Buddhist monasteries, to be distributed by the monks, whose moral authority makes it the only institution capable of standing up to the military.

Source

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Bush urged to act on Burma
May 17, 2008 - US lawmakers today urged President George W. Bush to consider "humanitarian intervention" in cyclone-hit Burma after its military rulers refused to allow foreign experts to direct relief efforts despite rising deaths.

Forty-three members of the House of Representatives wrote to Bush asking him to "strongly consider'' backing efforts by France, Britain, Germany, Denmark and other nations to gain entry into the devastated Irrawaddy Delta region "to provide urgent life-saving humanitarian aid''. From both sides of the aisle, the lawmakers asked the US leader to "immediately and urgently'' consult other supportive and regional governments as Burma's military junta said today more than 133,000 people were dead or missing in the cyclone disaster. The new toll - nearly double yesterday's official figure of 71,000 - came two weeks after the storm left the country's rice-growing south in ruins and as the junta again rejected calls to let foreign experts direct the massive relief effort for 2.5 million needy survivors.

The lawmakers said Bush should pursue the talks to determine the extent to which the United States could provide support for a "peaceful international humanitarian intervention and life-saving humanitarian aid'' to Cyclone Nargis victims amid "the military regime's intransigence''. The junta has insisted it can manage the catastrophe alone, despite urgent international pleas to open up their doors and avert a second wave of death among desperate victims short of food, water, shelter and medical care. The generals have accepted hundreds of tonnes of relief supplies but have all but sealed off the disaster zone, keeping out most foreigners and insisting that the country can rebuild on its own.

The American lawmakers said it now appeared that China would block any move by the UN Security Council to authorise relief because of the objections of Burma's junta. US helicopters, ships, trucks, and airplanes filled with life-saving supplies meanwhile sit unused in Burma's neighbouring countries, they noted. "We now face the possible death of 2.5 million people in Myanmar (Burma). Thirteen days after the cyclone hit, there is no more time to wait,'' they warned in the letter dated yesterday and sent today.

Nobel peace laureate Desmond Tutu has also written to Bush and French President Nicolas Sarkozy and British Prime Minister Gordon Brown, saying the UN Security Council should authorise immediate shipments of aid to Burma "over the objections of the military regime''. "The refusal of the Burmese military regime to accept full, adequate humanitarian aid from the international community is nothing short of criminal and unprecedented in recent history,'' said the former South African archbishop.

Crimes against humanity

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One would think the China quake to be more economic damage...

'Cyclone Nargis to have bigger impact than Tsunami
May 17 : World Vision chief executive Tim Costello, who returned after a 10-day visit to Myanmar, has said that Cyclone Nargis is going to have a bigger impact on the country than the (Boxing Day) tsunami did on Sri Lanka, Indonesia and Thailand.

Costello said that the Burmese military government was still hampering aid efforts while its people endured an "unprecedented level" of human suffering. Cyclone Nargis, which hit two weeks ago, has left nearly 78,000 people dead and another 56,000 are still missing.

Costello said the monsoon rains had begun to fall bringing the threat of further deaths from disease. "We saw skin infections and (an) increase in malaria. We fear the outbreak of cholera because that is absolutely lethal ... it's now a race against the weather and, literally, the obstacles that have been in our way to save lives," he added.

Costello said he did not know how many people had been killed. British officials have estimated the number of dead and missing could be as high as 200,000. Costello was restricted to the Burma's capital Rangoon during his visit. News.com.au quoted Costello as saying that there are tens of thousands of people who have yet to receive even the most basic aid.

"It (the cyclone) is going to knock the rice belt of Burma around for years," Costello said. He added that the World Vision had never operated in such a "narrow human space" like this before. He said the military government simply did not have the capacity to do the job, but insisted it could.

'Cyclone Nargis to have bigger impact than Tsunami

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Children starving `cause the generals are too uppity to accept help...
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Starvation Warning for Burma's Kids
Sunday, May. 18, 2008 — Thousands of children in Burma will starve to death in two to three weeks unless food is rushed to them, an aid agency warned Sunday as an increasingly angry international community pleaded for approval to mount an all-out effort to help cyclone survivors.

The United Nations said Burma's isolationist ruling generals were even forbidding the import of communications equipment, hampering already difficult contact among relief agencies. A U.N. situation report said Saturday that emergency relief from the international community had reached an estimated 500,000 people. But the regime insists it will handle distribution to victims of Cyclone Nargis. U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, who has been unable to sway Burma's leaders by telephone, said he was sending U.N. humanitarian chief John Holmes to Myanmar this weekend.

Holmes was expected to arrive Sunday evening in Burma's largest city, Rangoon, said Amanda Pitt, a U.N. spokeswoman in Bangkok, the capital of neighboring Thailand. "He's going at the request of the secretary-general to find out what's really going on the ground, to get a much better picture of how the response is going and ... to see how much we can help them scale up this response," Pitt said. Details of the visit, she said, were still being worked out.

The U.N. report said all communications equipment used by foreign agences must be purchased through Burma's Ministry of Posts and Communications — with a maximum of 10 telephones per agency — for $1,500 each. Importing equipment is not allowed. State-run radio said the government has so far spent 20 billion kyat (about $2 million) for relief work and has received millions of dollars worth of relief supplies from local and international donors. It said the government was distributing assistance promptly and efficiently to the affected areas.

Aid agencies were not convinced. Save the Children, a global aid agency, said Sunday that thousands of young children face starvation without quick food aid. "We are extremely worried that many children in the affected areas are now suffering from severe acute malnourishment, the most serious level of hunger," said Jasmine Whitbread, who heads the agency's operation in Britain. "When people reach this stage, they can die in a matter of days."

Source

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Monks makin' a comeback...

The Return of Burma's Monks
Friday, May. 16, 2008 - Rangoon travel agent Chin Chin used to take tourists to a nearby Irrawaddy delta town famous for its pottery. But the vast waterworld of rivers and rice fields that stretched beyond it was a foreign land to her until Cyclone Nargis and its horrific aftermath.

On Thursday, Chin Chin and her friends bought rice and water, loaded it on a truck, and drove deep into the delta. She was shocked by what she saw: roads lined with hundreds of cold and hungry villagers, disregarded by their own government, who had walked for an hour from their broken villages to beg from passing motorists. "They were mostly housewives," recalls Chin Chin, who goes by the nickname. "They told me, 'Rice is a must, so it's worth standing in the rain for three or four hours to get some.' They didn't even have a change of clothes." Fighting back her tears, Chin Chin gave out rice and listened to stories of families torn apart and villages destroyed. "It was piteous," she says. "I really sympathized with them. We didn't see any aid from government or foreign groups."

Chin Chin belongs to a burgeoning homegrown relief effort which is capturing Burmese from all walks of life. Students and shopkeepers, medics and models — thousands of people have now donated money, food or services to Nargis victims. Hundreds like Chin Chin are delivering aid themselves, while privately run local charities are reorienting their operations around cyclone relief.

While they continue to make it difficult for foreigners to offer aid, Burma's generals welcome the help of their own people — at least officially. "Myanmar people's generosity is amazing," marvels a recent article in The New Light of Myanmar, a state-run newspaper.* Privately, however, they must be getting nervous. Ordinary Burmese are horrified by the suffering of their compatriots and angry at the junta's inadequate attempts to alleviate it. Their humanitarian efforts could well spark a political one, especially as it also involves Buddhist monks, who last September led the biggest anti-government protests Burma had seen for nearly 20 years.

MORE

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Everglades burning...

Florida's Everglades burning
May 19,`08 -- About 33,000 acres of Florida's Everglades National Park have been consumed by a 5-day-old wildfire, officials said Sunday.

The fire blackened 10,000 acres Sunday alone when temperatures were in the 90s, including a record 96 degrees in Fort Lauderdale, The Miami Herald reported. The air and ground assault on the fire included 170 firefighters brought in from several other states.

With firefighters unable to extinguish the blaze, officials said smoke in the region would likely only be worse Monday morning and temperatures were expected to remain high into mid-week, the newspaper said. West Miami-Dade was under a dense smoke advisory.

''The northern boundary is exhibiting the most extreme behavior, such as highest flames and fastest spread,'' said Nina Barrow, a spokeswoman for the Southern Area Incident Management Blue team, a multi-prong response unit for the region. One factor working in the firefighters' favor was that the fire was headed north toward two areas that have already burned and could run out of fuel, the Herald said.

Source

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Junta relenting on aid help restrictions...

Aid breakthrough in sight for Burmese storm victims
Monday, 19 May 2008 - A British envoy has spoken of a possible breakthrough in overcoming the Burmese junta's resistance to foreigners distributing aid to 2.5 million survivors of Cyclone Nargis, as the UN secretary general, Mr Ban Ki-moon prepared to fly to Rangoon.

With international pressure on the military junta mounting, Lord Malloch-Brown, the minister for Asia and the UN, said that a compromise appeared to be in sight, under which the UN and Burma's Asian neighbours would deliver foreign aid into the cyclone-devastated Irrawaddy delta. The junta's obstruction of a foreign-led relief operation has triggered sharp condemnation in the West, where Gordon Brown described the government's attitude as "inhuman". "I think we're potentially at a turning point but, like all turning points in (Burma), the corner will have a few S-bends in it," Lord Malloch-Brown said.

The junta says 78,000 people have died. The UN estimates that at least 200,000 are dead or missing. John Holmes, the UN humanitarian coordinator, arrived in the Burmese capital last night with an appeal from the UN secretary general to the junta's commanders about widening the aid effort. The senior leader, Gen Than Shwe, appeared on television meeting survivors for the first time since the cyclone on 2 May. He had earlier refused to take telephone calls from Mr Ban who is due in Rangoon later this week.

The junta is apparently blocking a massive aid package out of fears that Western countries could be intent on regime change. The French ambassador to the UN, Jean-Maurice Ripert, told reporters that France had been accused by the Burmese delegate of sending "a warship" to Burma. French, US and British ships have gathered in international waters to dispatch aid to the delta. The British charity Save the Children, based inside Burma, warned yesterday that thousands of children under five could die within weeks if food is not rushed to them.

Source

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UN leaders given access to Myanmar cyclone zone
May 19, 2008 - Myanmar's military regime allowed the U.N. humanitarian chief into the devastated Irrawaddy delta for a brief tour on Monday, a U.N. official said, as the government's dealings with the international community appeared to thaw.

John Holmes, the U.N. undersecretary-general for humanitarian affairs, flew by helicopter into an area where hundreds of thousands of cyclone victims suffer from hunger, disease and lack of shelter. The U.N. official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to the media, said after a few hours in the delta Holmes had a working lunch with international aid agencies in Myanmar's largest city, Yangon.

In another sign the junta may chart a new course in its relationship with the United Nations, the government also gave permission for U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon to travel to the delta after his scheduled arrival in the country Wednesday, U.N. spokeswoman Michele Montas said in New York. Earlier, junta leader Senior Gen. Than Shwe had refused to take telephone calls from Ban and had not responded to two letters from him, Montas said. Holmes, who arrived in Yangon on Sunday, was to deliver a third letter about how the U.N. can assist the government's immediate and long-term relief effort.

In Singapore, Southeast Asian nations — under fire for being too lenient with Myanmar's junta — held an emergency meeting Monday in the hopes of pressing the isolated country to accept more international help. The Association of Southeast Asian Nations plans to consider a proposal that it play a role in arranging the entry of aid to the country, said Philippine Assistant Foreign Secretary Marilyn Alarilla. But suggestions that aid be taken in by force were unlikely to gain support.

More UN official: UN leaders allowed in Myanmar delta - International Herald Tribune

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Deadbeat generals...

World Bank: no money for tardy Burma
May 20, 2008 - THE World Bank won't provide any financial aid to cyclone-stricken Burma because the country has not been servicing its World Bank debt since 1998, a bank official said today.

"The World Bank is not in a position to assist Myanmar (Burma) at this time," World Bank managing director Juan Jose Daboub said.

He said it was the bank's policy not to provide funds to countries that have fallen behind on debt repayments.

Burma has been criticised over its insistence on handling most of the disaster relief effort since Cyclone Nargis struck the country 17 days ago, leaving more than 133,000 people dead or missing.

World Bank: no money for tardy Burma | NEWS.com.au

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China: 40,000 Dead, 5 Million Homeless After Quake
May 20, 2008 - China says 40,000 dead, 5 million homeless after quake; govt struggling to provide shelter

China said it was struggling to find shelter for many of the 5 million people whose homes were destroyed in last week's earthquake, while the confirmed death toll rose Tuesday to more than 40,000. Meanwhile, rescuers pulled a 31-year-old man to safety, the second known case of someone being found alive a week after the May 12 earthquake. Ma Yuanjiang was saved from the debris of the Yingxiu Bay Hydropower Plant after a 30-hour rescue effort, the official Xinhua News Agency said. Ma was able to speak and began to eat small amounts of food, colleague Wu Geng told the agency. A miner was rescued after being trapped for 170 hours Monday, Xinhua said.

The State Council, China's Cabinet, raised the overall confirmed death toll to 40,075, most of those in Sichuan province. Officials have said the final number killed by the quake is expected to surpass 50,000. The government was setting up temporary housing for quake victims unable to find shelter with relatives, but there was a "desperate need for tents" to accommodate them, said Jiang Li, vice minister of civil affairs. She told reporters in Beijing that nearly 280,000 tents had been shipped to the area and 700,000 more ordered, with factories working triple shifts to meet demand.

Another 480,000 quilts and 1.7 million jackets were also sent to quake survivors, Jiang said. Five million people lost their homes in the quake, she said. "Despite generous donations, the disaster is so great that victims still face a challenge in finding living accommodations," Jiang said. China has said it would accept foreign medical teams, as the relief efforts shifted from searching for survivors to caring for the homeless. A growing number of countries responded to the call, dispatching doctors to the quake area Tuesday.

More ABC News: China's Death Toll at 40,000; 5M Homeless

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More dead, many orphans...

China: Quake toll surpasses 60,000
May 24, 2008 -- Death toll surpasses 60,000, Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao says; U.N. chief tours quake epicenter Saturday; Officials appeal for millions of tents to shelter 5 million people made homeless

China's Premier Wen Jiabao Saturday gave U.N. chief Ban Ki-moon a dramatic look at damage caused by the massive quake that hit Sichuan province earlier this month as the death toll from the catastrophe jumped past 60,000. A strong aftershock shook the town of Yingxiu, a small town near the epicenter of May 12's 7.9 magnitude quake, as Wen and Ban toured the area. "The world will not forget," Ban told Wen, who appealed the U.N. chief to help raise international aid for the region.

China's central government announced Saturday that the death toll had risen to 60,560 with another 26,221 people missing and 353,290 injured. Nearly every building in Yingxiu was destroyed and no residents remain there. About half of the town's 18,000 residents are either dead or missing and most survivors left on foot, leaving behind a ghost town. Wen predicted that a return to "normal" life in the area would take about three months, adding that the lack of infectious disease outbreaks despite harsh living conditions for survivors had lessened the scope of the disaster. The central government estimates that 45 million people, mostly in the Sichuan province, were affected by the massive earthquake and that five million were left homeless.

China put out an urgent call for tents and medical supplies to help victims of the earthquake. Despite the passage of 12 days since the quake, searchers are still hoping to find people alive under collapsed structures. A government official said Saturday that a rescue operation was under way for 24 coal miners believed trapped in three mines in the quake zone. The government said at least 176 coal miners were killed and 254 were missing in the 316 coal mines affected by quake.

More China: Quake toll surpasses 60,000 - CNN.com

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Chinese Quake Orphans Await Adoption
China Estimates That 4,000 Children Lost Their Parents, Many Are Eager To Open Their Homes

The children's faces stare in somber black-and-white photos from newspapers and scribbled posters at relief camps, seeking their parents. Many will never find them. As the first estimate of orphans - more than 4,000 - emerged Thursday from last week's deadly earthquake, thousands of Chinese are rushing to offer their homes. "My husband and I would really like to adopt an earthquake orphan," Wang Liqin wrote on popular Web site Tianya.com in a forum that was already three pages long.

The high interest is another sign of China's tremendous post-quake outpouring of sympathy, buoyed by rising prosperity. And it's a surprising turnabout in a country in which government red-tape, poverty and traditional attitudes long combined to discourage adoption. The new enthusiasm also means that Americans and other foreigners wanting to adopt may not have a chance. Officials estimate that the number of Chinese wanting to adopt the earthquake's orphans may outnumber the orphans themselves.

"Every day, my ministry receives hundreds of calls," Jiang Li, China's vice minister of Civil Affairs, told reporters this week. At the Civil Affairs department in Sichuan province, the heart of the disaster area, calls reached 2,000 a day, the state-run Xinhua News Agency said. Some Chinese, reached this week by phone, said they want to adopt because they are unable to have a child of their own. Some see a chance to have a rare second child despite China's strict one-child policy. And some, like Wang, whose own baby didn't survive childbirth this year, understand loss and want to help.

More Chinese Quake Orphans Await Adoption, China Estimates That 4,000 Children Lost Their Parents, Many Are Eager To Open Their Homes - CBS News