Yushu Earthquake

We take a short time to look at the recent cataclysmic disaster that hit Qinghai, China. Yes, while we here at The Daily Zombies, fully relished in more than occasional sardonicism and mockery on the strange ways of the human kind, there are at times, some issues that any living human can't afford to simply turn a blind eye and look away. On April 14th, a 7.1-magnitude earthquake struck Yushu, Qinghai, China, at 7:49 am local time, with the epicenter located at Rima village (日玛村/日麻村), Upper Laxiu township (上拉秀乡) of Yushu County, in remote and rugged terrain, near the border of Tibet Autonomous Region. The epicenter is about 30 km from Gyêgu town, the seat of Yushu County, and about 240 km from Qamdo, and is in fact a sparsely populated area on the Tibetan plateau that is regularly hit by earthquakes. Sparse indeed, but nonetheless populated. What touches me in particular is the above picture of a nine-month-old child child who was injured in the earthquake and is now awaiting rescue and evacuation (on the cover of the April 16th edition of Singapore'Straits Times. As of now, 1,484 people have been confirmed dead, 312 missing, and 12,088 injured of which 1,394 are severely injured. The scale of the calamity and fears of disease has forced a break from the traditional Tibetan "Sky Burials" in which corpses are left on mountaintops to decompose or be consumed by vultures as massive cremation were conducted. The Huffington Post has put up an article on how help can be rendered to aid the victims. Do be mindful of the regular donation fraud that always appears whenever a major crisis arises.