Mission & Justice

Benjamin Morgan; 16/5/08
Rescue crews pulled a man from a crushed building today exactly 100 hours after China’s quake, but only after amputating an arm and a leg in a desperate bid to save his life. Rescue workers, army troops and a tense crowd of about 100 onlookers erupted in wild cheers and applause as Liu Deyun was pulled to safety after a 12-hour rescue effort that gripped this quake-pulverised town since early morning. Liu being pulled from the rubble of a collapsed factory building at 6.28pm (2028 AEST), 100 hours to the minute after China’s biggest earthquake in a generation flattened huge areas of southwestern China. “It was a miracle, but miracles happen through hard work and this happened through our hard work,” Zhao Hongxing, an army doctor who was involved in saving Liu, said.

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Matthew Denholm; 17/5/08

Tasmanian’s Director of Public Health has banned Gunns from using controversial herbicides in a town drinking-water catchment and suggested their use state-wide be reconsidered. Roscoe Taylor revealed yesterday he had directed the timber company not to use the triazine herbicides - atrazine and simazine - to control weeds in its forest plantations in the Macquarie River catchment. This followed repeated detection of simazine in drinking water supplies for the town of Ross at levels more than double the national guideline. Dr Taylor also told The Weekend Australian he believed the use of the chemicals in cooler states might need to be re-examined following evidence they were persisting longer in cool environments.

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16/5/08

Chinese authorities are burying hundreds of people killed in a devastating earthquake in mass graves, as rescue efforts to find people buried under the rubble of collapsed buildings continue. Health authorities said on Friday that teams on the ground are covering the mass graves with lime in order to prevent the spread of disease. Hu Jintao, China’s president, earlier arrived in Sichuan, the province hardest hit by the earthquake, as authorities stepped up recovery efforts. China has accepted foreign help for the first time amid fears of a much higher body count.

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Nico Hines & Jane Macartney; 15/5/08

The Chinese Government rushed 2,000 troops to a dam above the devastated town of Dujiangyan, in Sichuan province, today in an emergency attempt to plug cracks caused by the earthquake. If the Zipingpu Dam were to collapse, torrents of water would surge downriver into some of the areas where more than 42,000 people are reported dead or missing. Rescuers finally reached some the worst hit of those areas in the Sichuan province today. The official death toll now stands at 14,866, but while the army and emergency workers battle to reach isolated areas and scour mile after mile of rubble, the scale of the disaster continues to rise.

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Kenneth Denby; 16/5/08

The Burmese authorities have sealed off the cyclone disaster zone from the outside world, expelling foreign aid workers and placing multiple checkpoints along roads into the Irrawaddy Delta, to the despair of foreign diplomats and aid workers. The isolation of the delta confirms the growing sense among international organisations that the Burmese junta is never going to allow a wide-ranging foreign-led aid effort of the kind that was mounted in several countries after the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami. Aid groups are trying instead to mount a stealth operation in which Western aid is distributed by government organisations, local aid workers, and international staff from countries that the regime regards as friendly and compliant.

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15/5/08

Australia will compensate a number of Indonesian fishermen after 55 men caught last month were cleared of illegal fishing. The compensation is for the wrongful destruction of boats belonging to some of the fishers. The men were caught during a blitz on illegal fishing in the waters north of Australia in late April, when 33 boats were apprehended. Federal Fisheries Minister Tony Burke said today nine of the boats and 55 fishermen had been found not to be involved in illegal fishing.

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15/5/08

The full horror of the Chinese earthquake emerged yesterday as rescuers discovered towns near the epicentre almost wiped out, including one that lost nearly 80per cent of its population. The death toll has climbed well above 20,000, and is rising by the hour as more information comes in from stricken communities. As many as 60,000 people are believed to still be missing in the region near the quake’s epicentre, prompting fears the death toll could rise dramatically.

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15/5/08

The official death toll from Cyclone Nargis which hit Burma on May 3 has been updated to 38,491, with 27,838 people missing, state radio said. The new toll announced today was raised from 34,273 dead and 27,836 missing, issued yesterday. As well as the dead and missing, another 1,403 were injured, state radio said. However, the United Nations has warned the number of dead likely exceeds 100,000, and that many more may die unless vital aid reaches up to two million survivors.

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Matthew Denholm; 15/4/08

ANZ Bank says it is examining whether the Gunns pulp mill proposed for northern Tasmania will destroy high conservation value forests before deciding whether to finance the project. Environment Minister Peter Garrett, his predecessor Malcolm Turnbull and the Tasmanian Government all refused to consider the impact on Tasmania’s forests of the mill’s appetite for up to four million tonnes of woodchips each year. However, ANZ - Gunns’ banker and a proposed financier of the $2 billion project - earlier this month adopted a policy committing it to “avoiding” support for projects that destroy high conservation value forests.

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Michael Zhao; 14/5/08

China’s May 12 earthquake was massive in scope and ruthless in intensity, visiting destruction on a mountainous, peripheral region where the Tibetan plateau meets the Sichuan basin in the southwest. The death toll is now more than 12,000 and is sure to climb higher as soldiers and rescue teams pull bodies from the rubble. The initial temblor was magnitude 7.9, and there were nearly 2,000 aftershocks within the first day, three of which were magnitude 6 or greater at the epicenter in Wenchuan County.

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