The Red Cross Society of Southwest China's Yunnan Province Wednesday made a second urgent appeal for the society as a whole to help victims of a devastating earthquake, which hit the province last Monday.

“The quake victims are now in urgent need of tents, clothes, quilts, food, medicine and other materials,” said Wu Jiaquan, director of the General Office of the Red Cross Society of Yunnan.

The deadly quake, measuring 6.2 on the Richter scale, hit the province on Monday night last week.

It has had an impact on the lives of 1.25 million residents with 700,000 seriously affected in a number of respects, according to figures of the Red Cross Society of Yunnan.

Wu said most of the victims can live on reserves of food for only half a month, and around 45,000 local residents need to move to safer surroundings as soon as possible, due to the collapse of their dwellings in the tremor.

Nearly a dozen reservoirs within Dayao County, the quake's epicenter, have been damaged and two of them have started to crack and leak.

Local water conservation authorities have started to evacuate the residents living at the drainage area of the two reservoirs to avoid further calamities.

The Red Cross Society of Yunnan called for help from all walks of life right after the earthquake happened and has thus far received a warm response.

It has received over six million yuan (US$726,000) worth of donation from outside the province. Residents of Yunnan have donated 700,000 yuan (US$85,000) worth of medicine, food, quilts and clothing to the victims.

Wu said the first batch of donated materials, worth four million yuan (US$484,000), have been sent to the disaster areas and the second batch will be sent in a week.

In anther development, nearly two million yuan (US$242,000) worth of materials have been sent to the disaster areas directly by donors, according to the province's disaster control and prevention office.

The website of the Red Cross Society of Yunnan is www.ynredcross.org and the contact telephone numbers are 86-0871-3641901 and 86-0871-3641902.

(China Daily July 31, 2003)