China quake rebuild may take three years

Chinese officials on Friday said it would take three years to rebuild the area of Sichuan devastated by last week’s earthquake, as first indications of unrest among the millions of people affected began to surface.Television cameras captured images of a large protest outside a supermarket in Deyang after residents suspected earthquake aid had been diverted to the store. A government official was reported to have been injured in the incident. There have also been reports of relief trucks being held up by survivors desperate for food and water.Relief workers said that, given the scale of the reconstruction and humanitarian challenge ahead, such outbursts of frustration were inevitable. “You can definitely feel in some places that people are getting more and more restless,” said one charity official who has been in Sichuan for the last week.Li Chengyun, vice-governor of Sichuan province, said the government planned to rebuild entire towns and villages in the area affected by the quake, although the priority would be to construct temporary accommodation for the estimated 5m people who have been left homeless.“We will strive to provide safe temporary housing for 98 per cent of the residents within the next month,” he said at a press conference in Beijing. Mr Li repeated an appeal for donations of tents – the government has so far distributed about 400,000 but believes it needs more than 3m.Officials are concerned about the risk of flooding from the more than 30 lakes that have been created in the region by landslides that have blocked rivers. Zhu Bing, a water resources official from the Sichuan government, said that the so-called “quake-lakes” were safe at the moment and that special teams were monitoring them constantly.However, he added: “There is a possibility of a dam collapsing entirely if there were a strong aftershock or a heavy rainstorm.” With the rainy season soon to arrive, officials said there had been thousands of small aftershocks since the main earthquake on May 12.The government is starting to debate whether all the affected towns and villages should be rebuilt in the same place, given the risk of earthquakes in the region and the difficult mountainous terrain in some parts. Officials at Beichuan county, one of the worst affected by the quake, have suggested they are likely to rebuild the county seat at a different location.The large number of military and police who have been mobilized to the area have been assisted by a huge volume of volunteers who have made their way to Sichuan. Mr Li estimated that as many as 200,000 people have volunteered to help out. Meanwhile, the Chinese banking regulator said the country’s banks should write off loans that could not be recovered because of the earthquake. Agricultural Bank of China, the largest lender in rural areas, predicted that its bad loans would increase by $850m as a result of the earthquake, although no other banks have yet provided details. Banks should also write off credit card debt of those killed in the quake, the China Banking Regulatory Commission said in a statement.

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