The House Collapsed Right After We Fled

“It was like thunder that suddenly came, I was preparing breakfast for my grandchildren, and the sudden sound gave me a huge fright,” says Zhou Shaoying as she recalls her terrible experience on Saturday morning when a 7.0 magnitude earthquake struck her hometown, LongmenTownship in Sichuan Province, China.

Zhou sat in front of her new “home”, a tent, given by the government, to tell World Vision’s assessment team her story.

She lives with her big family with nine members, including three children aged five, seven and 10. Already, the children have returned to school and are receiving psychological counselling there. The adults are helping with the search and rescue.

Like many other villagers, Zhou’s family did not have time to save anything when the quake occurred. All they could think of was to run.

“I grabbed the two kids and ran out of the house, which collapsed right after my evacuation.”  Zhou says.

Zhou says that her family earns around RMB 8,000 (1,300 US dollars) a year but that barely covered their basic needs. Their income mainly came from raising pigs and planting maize, rice and vegetables. Unfortunately, the earthquake not only damaged their house, but also all their valuables at home, their crops, livestock and food stock as well.

“We still remember the 2008 massive earthquake, in which a wall of our house collapsed and the roof damaged. We spent a long time to repair the damaged parts.” Zhou sighed, “But now they are all gone, again.”

The housing problem was one the most worrying to them. “We are not able to build a new house without any help from the government and others.”

The government has delivered tents, water and instant noodles for them and other affected villagers. They were eagerly in need of power supply, water and seeds.

“The power generator would be essential as we need lights at night, to process food to eat, and to boil water. The water supply is also in need, especially for our fields. It’s the planting season; we cannot afford missing it... Otherwise, we will end up having nothing to eat this year.”

By Merry Zou and Gwen Wong