I think short of actually going over to China and helping, the best thing we can do is to continue to raise awareness about the tragic events and help groups like The Red Cross and Mercy Corps raise more money for their efforts.

The other thing to remember is that the recovery from this will be a very long road...years of clean-up and re-building, so continued support will be critical…

According to an article in the NY Times today, the earthquake has left nearly 10 million people without homes.

Committee of 100 has joined the effort with a new relief fund:

http://www.committee100.org/heightline/C100ChinaEarthquakeReliefFund.pdf

the death toll is said to be over 50000 now....

the dam broke too because of the rain

supposedly there were a bunch of frogs on a city street and people took that as a bad omen

yeah i read that...http://www.weirdasianews.com/2008/05/13/frog-migration-omen-to-china-earthquake-disaster/

Frog Migration: Omen to China Earthquake Disaster

On May 5th, many Chinese locals noticed thousands of frogs on the move. They were seen traveling without fear of traffic as they crossed streets in mass floods.

Many Chinese sensed the migration as a bad omen of a coming natural disaster, but the Chinese government told them that it was just a natural migration for the purpose of propagation. This calmed the people and no one took the omen very seriously.

On Monday, 12th of May, at about 2:45pm, central China region recorded a 7.8-magnitude quake which occured near Wenchuan County, Sichuan province, that killed nearly 10,000 people.

Many civilian houses and roads were collapsed and damaged. In one Dujiangyan city middle school, 900 students and teachers were buried in the collapsed building, at least 50 were killed.

The quake was the largest the region has seen for over a generation. It was so strong, even countries like Thailand, Vietnam and Hong Kong felt the shake.

Many people are now calling the Chinese Earthquake Test Centers “useless”, as they were unable to even detect the earthquake before it happened. When they finally announced the earthquake had occured, it was 12 minutes after the disaster, and 2 minutes after the US had announced a large earthquake in China.

As for the Frogs and their omen, Chinese scientists stated animals have much better sense than human on detecting the natural disasters like this.

So much for “migration for propagation”.

so many people are homeless now

i wonder if they’ll post pone the Olympics

doubt it haha this was discussed earlier

Crispie - 05/16/08 7:17 pm

supposedly there were a bunch of frogs on a city street and people took that as a bad omen

I wonder if there were any people who saw the frogs and said “We better get out of here...there’s an earthquake coming!” and actually took action on seeing them.

faker - 05/17/08 12:31 am

i wonder if they’ll post pone the Olympics

Unless the earthquake caused damage to any of the Olympic venues or areas that are specifically needed to host, I seriously doubt they will postpone the Olympics.  Too much at stake...and in fact, the Olympics can be used as a channel to actually raise more awareness and aid…

PLam - 05/17/08 11:57 am

Crispie - 05/16/08 7:17 pm

supposedly there were a bunch of frogs on a city street and people took that as a bad omen

I wonder if there were any people who saw the frogs and said “We better get out of here...there’s an earthquake coming!” and actually took action on seeing them.

haha i doubt people did :X they probably said something strange is going to happen though

its probably just a migration thing

peachgaru - 05/17/08 3:23 pm

its probably just a migration thing

But if this was the case, then those frogs would do that every year, right?