Members of the Bay Area's Chinese community spent Monday trying to get news about a devastating earthquake that struck the Sichuan province of China, killing thousands of people.
News of the disaster was sparse Monday, and communication with people in that region - not good in the best of times - was nearly impossible.
The Rev. Norman Fong of the Chinatown Community Development Center said he knows of at least two families with relatives in the province of Sichuan. He said he had not been able to talk to the family members directly, but was told that they were trying to get through to the area to determine the extent of the damage, and whether their relatives were hurt.
"The whole Chinatown community is just learning about this, so it's very soon to know much," he said. "Of course, everyone is worried."
The Associated Press reported the 7.9 magnitude quake devastated a region of small cities and towns set amid steep hills north of Sichuan's provincial capital of Chengdu.
A Chronicle reader, Hubert Tung of San Francisco, e-mailed to say his father was able to reach relatives who live in Chengdu. He said family members there were all right, but they slept in their car through the night rather than stay inside their home.
Tung's father told him there were broken dishes and dropped pictures, but not much more damage. He said there is some telephone and e-mail service in and out of the region.
The quake struck in midafternoon and could be felt in Vietnam, almost 1,000 miles away.
Reports from state media and photos posted on the Internet underscored the immense scale of the devastation. In the town of Juyuan, south of the epicenter, a three-story high school collapsed, burying as many as 900 students and killing at least 50, the official Xinhua news agency said. Photos showed people using cranes, mechanical hoists and their hands to remove slabs of concrete and steel.
"We worry a lot about those rural communities," Fong said, "because the infrastructure is not so great. It will be awhile before we find out anything."
The Bay Area is home to hundreds of thousands of people of Chinese ancestry, but there are relatively few people from Sichuan province, in central China.
Evelyn Nakano Glenn, a professor of ethnic studies at UC Berkeley, said the migration of Chinese to the United States that occurred in the late 19th and early 20th centuries involved mostly Cantonese-speaking people from the east and south. As with most immigration, it is common that the people who emigrate from a certain place bring family and friends from there, as well.
She said there are many people from Sichuan province in the Bay Area, but that they are not concentrated in a specific locale.
A spokesman for the Chinese Consulate in San Francisco said his office was monitoring the situation in China but that he did not know of any specific plan for help to that stricken region. He said that might change in subsequent days as the full magnitude of the disaster becomes clear.
The State Department said China has not officially asked for outside help but that the United States is standing by to provide whatever supplies or aid might be necessary.
The American Red Cross said teams with the China Red Cross are on their way to the region to assess the damage. It's still too early to know whether a special relief project will be needed, but if so, the Red Cross and other relief agencies will spread the word.
Fong said news of the earthquake rocked the Chinatown community despite the fact that few people from Sichuan live here. "We all know somebody who's affected by this kind of thing," he said.
How to help
You can send help for the victims of the earthquake through these Web sites:
www.redcross.org
www.mercycorps.org
www.care.org
www.savethechildren.org
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