Relief materials, including 900 tents and 13 tons of grain, arrived in southwest China's Yunnan Province Saturday where earthquake victims are trying to repair their shaken lives amid continuous aftershocks.
The supply of electricity and communication to the villages of Waiqidi and Haigubo in Liuju Town, the epicenter of the quake, were temporarily cut off but have been restored, local officials said.
"It is great to receive tents from the government today so we don't have to sleep in the open any more," said villager Zu Xuemei while carrying a tent back home in Haozhiqing Village, where 41 tents were handed out Saturday.
However, officials said some villagers still had to live in makeshift shelters made of plastic film.
"We have distributed 166 tents in Waiqidi village," said Leng Shulian, an official in charge of disaster relief in the village. "We need about another 100 tents."
To date, only 1,100 tents have arrived in Dayao County where more than 2,000 residential buildings collapsed during the earthquake, which measured 6.1 on the Richter scale, in Dayao and neighboring counties Thursday night.
Na Yunde, a magistrate of Dayao county, said another 200 tents were en route from Kunming, the provincial capital.
Na said armed police and the People's Liberation Army had been mobilized to help quake victims build 112 makeshift schoolrooms within three days as 14 schools were destroyed and 502 schoolrooms damaged.
The Ministry of Civil Affairs has launched an emergency program to allocate relief funds of 10 million yuan (US$1.2 million) to the disaster areas.
Relief materials including 6,100 tents, 13 tons of grain, 500 items of clothing and more than 2,500 quilts, were on way to Dayao, Yao'an, Yongren, Mouding and Yuanmou counties in the Yi Autonomous Prefecture of Chuxiong, said the ministry.
Three people were reported killed and 46 injured during the quake while the livelihoods of 593,000 people have been affected.
Located at the junction of the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau and the Yunnan-Guizhou Plateau, Yunnan Province suffers from frequent earthquakes with 15 tremors measuring over six on the Richter scale recorded since 1949, resulting in more than 18,000 dead.
A strong quake measuring 6.2 on the Richter scale struck Dayao on July 21 this year, killing 16 and injuring about 600 people.
(Xinhua News Agency October 19, 2003)
