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By Angelo S. Samonte, Reporter
The Philippines will send a
15-man medical team to quake-hit China, Malacañang said Tuesday, as
the death toll there nears 12,000.
Also on Tuesday, a strong
aftershock measuring 6.1 on the Richter scale rocked southwest
China’s Sichuan province around 3:10 p.m. The epicenter was again
in Wenchuan county. This was the strongest aftershock after the
devastating quake, measuring 7.8 on the Richter scale, hit that
county, 159 kilometers northwest of Chengdu, on Monday afternoon.
Anthony Golez, deputy press
secretary, said the departments of Health and Foreign Affairs as
well as the Armed Forces of the Philippines are discussing how to
send assistance.
“Every time we have disasters
in the country, it only takes hours for China to send help,” Golez
said. “This is one way to reciprocate their generosity and
kindness to the Filipino people … As soon as the DFA [Department
of Foreign Affairs] gives the go-signal, we will mobilize to
China.”
The medical team will include
pediatricians, psychiatrists and engineers, Golez added.
“The DFA will also see if there
are Filipino casualties,” he said. “The team will leave as soon
as possible. But it may also depend on the Chinese Embassy [in
Manila] when it needs our team.”
At noon Tuesday, a Foreign
Affairs official told radio station dzMM that there are Filipinos
across China, but the department has not received any reports of
Filipino casualties in the quake.
Golez added that the medical team
leaving for China will also bring medicines. “It’s important for
medical teams going to other countries to help in calamities to be
self-sufficient.”
In the same interview, the deputy
press secretary said the medical team that was supposed to go to
cyclone-hit Myanmar has yet to leave because of problems with travel
documents. The devastation in Myanmar will not happen in the
Philippines because the government has sufficient disaster
mitigation and response measures in place, Golez added.
He was reacting to the comment of
Sen. Rodolfo Biazon, who warned that the Myanmar incident might
happen in the Philippines.
“We encountered similar
incident two years ago that’s why the President ordered to
modernize Pagasa [Philippine Atmospheric, Geophysical and
Astronomical Services Administration], create disaster preparedness
campaign and educate the people regarding disasters,” Golez said.
Senate resolution
Also on Tuesday, the Senate
unanimously ratified a resolution expressing its sympathy and
solidarity with China.
Sen. Richard Gordon, also
chairman and chief executive officer of the Philippine National Red
Cross, filed the resolution, which stated, “The appalling loss of
lives, especially of young and promising students, anywhere in the
world deserves our sympathy.”
Gordon also wrote to Ambassador
Song Tao pledging the support of the Philippine National Red Cross,
mainly to send a disaster-management team that includes doctors,
nurses and a rescue truck capable of extracting survivors from
debris.
“We truly believe in the
universal brotherhood of men, the need to respond to the needs of
others in distress is truly imperative,” he said.
Death toll to rise
“So far the death toll from the
earthquake has reached 11,921,” Wang Zhenyao, head of the Civil
Affairs Ministry’s disaster relief department, told a news
conference in Beijing.
The death toll looked set to rise
as rescuers had only begun to enter hard-hit areas near the
epicenter, located in Wenchuan county, state media reported.
Wang provided no further details
on the casualties, but previous tallies have indicated that Sichuan
has suffered the overwhelming majority.
The 7.9-magnitude quake that
struck was the worst to hit China since the 1976 earthquake in the
city of Tangshan near Beijing, which claimed 242,000 lives,
according to Xinhua, the state-owned news agency.
Xinhua earlier quoted the
ministry as saying 132 people were also confirmed dead in Gansu, 85
in Shaanxi, eight in Chongqing and one in Yunnan province.
The national disaster relief
headquarters, however, also earlier reported 50 dead in Chongqing.
At least 2,000 people were killed
in the Sichuan city of Mianzhu alone, Xinhua reported. Another 4,800
remain buried in debris in the city of about 500,000 people, it
said.
Another 500 were confirmed killed
and 2,000 buried under debris in the city of Shifang, state TV said.
Similar reports have been
emerging from other cities and counties in the region, including
Beichuan county, where up to 5,000 may be dead and an estimated 80
percent of homes were destroyed by the quake and resulting
landslides, according to previous reports that quoted local
officials.
Premier Wen Jiabao early Tuesday
said the situation in southwest China was worse than initially
feared.
With Efren L. Danao, AFP and Xinhua
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