Disaster

I did say this news blog was not going to be about disasters and the bad things in life but two things cannot really be ignored since I last blogged over a month ago on 10th April - the earthquake in China and the behaviour of the Rangers’ fans.
On 14th May the Rangers fans let themselves and Scottish and British football down when they went on the rampage through Manchester after losing the EUFA Cup Final. I hope Liverpool’s Twelfth Man never behaves like that.
On 12th May China’s Sichuan Province was hit by an enormous earthquake that is estimated to have taken over 50,000 lives. As China is now more media friendly this was reported in greater detail than the Tangshan Earthquake of July 1976 that is estimated to have taken a quarter of a million lives. Officials said 80% of the buildings in Beichuan county, close to the epicentre, had been destroyed. The 7.8 quake was felt as far away as Beijing, Shanghai and the Thai capital, Bangkok. A week after the event the death toll from had risen to 40,075,. Tens of thousands more are still missing, and hopes have now gone of finding any people still alive. However, Chinese media say a woman was pulled from the rubble 195 hours - or eight days - after the disaster. Chinese aid workers are struggling to find shelter for millions who lost their homes. Foreign medical teams have started arriving in the area.