I put all my pictures online from the China trip: https://picasaweb.google.com/allstadt.k/EarthquakeConferenceInChengduChina#


On Day 4, we took a break from the conference that had just begun and embarked on a fieldtrip with the entire group of conference attendees this time. We filled three big tour buses. Everywhere we went, we formed a seismologist parade. I felt a little safer on the road this day since our huge buses had more momentum than most other vehicles on the road and also they were not nimble enough to make the hairraising types of maneuvers our little buses from the first two days made.

Our first stop was to a valley filled with farms where we found the fault scarp, this time a double step, on the edge of a construction zone/gravel pit. All 60 of us poked around the fault scarp and wandered through the farm fields where the new “terrace” popped up three years ago. All the locals just went about their business and hardly seemed to notice the swarm of scientists amongst their canola plants (see below). I guess they are used to it by now.


Our next stop was much more sobering, we headed toward the region of Beichuan, the worst-hit town in the earthquake and also, not coincidentally, where the maximum surface slip of the fault occurred. We first drove through the town, as we wound down the switch-backs in the road approaching the steep mountain valley town, what we saw was straight out of one of those apocalyptic films. Hundreds of ruined buildings tipped every which way, as if floating on a sea of rubble, landslides burying half the buildings and pushing the other half around like chess pawns. Part of the town was under water where the river was rerouted by landslides. Immediately after the earthquake it was impossible for rescuers to access the town because landslides took out all of the roads, and the narrow mountain valley topography meant there was only one or two roads to begin with, so the survivors were on their own for quite a while. One of the main Chinese seismologists said he was there soon after the earthquake, when the first outside rescuers finally made it in, and after seeing, and smelling, the death, destruction, and tragedy, he could not sleep for three nights.


We passed through the nightmare for now, heading to the edge of town where we found the largest vertical displacement along the fault of 9 meters! We had to climb up a hillside to get there. The scene we came across was of a three-story building still standing, but damaged, that abutted a huge hill 9 meters tall with a steep treeless slope. In the first picture below, you can see the house from far away, the hill at the right is the scarp, that hill wasn't there before! It rose out of the ground in probably less than a minutes time! The second picture is a view of the house from the top of the scarp, as you can see, the top of the scarp is higher than the house.


The owners of the house originally built there for the view over the valley, so this hill popped up 9 meters in a matter of seconds during the earthquake and blocked the view! Completely unimaginable. It’s amazing that a house so close to the scarp was still standing and structurally sound, though we heard that the grandmother living in the house was thrown out of the window due to the shaking and was killed. There were graves under big piles of rocks all over the hillside and people's belongings strewn about in the woods, half-decomposing. A heartbreaking scene to encounter: the detritus of ruined lives (see below).


The trip back through the ruined town prolonged the heartbreak. This time we stopped and walked around the road that they cleared of debris so people could come see the ruins. We all placed a yellow flower on the memorial to the victims near a huge landslide that buried a school containing 400 children. Bodies are still under the enormous pile of rocks, a chilling thought. After placing the flowers, we dispersed and walked around in awe and silence. I felt like I was being disrespectful to keep snapping pictures, but the sights were just so unbelievable I couldn’t stop even though it made me sick. Tour buses roared through town at top speed honking their horns to pick up and drop off tourists and many of whom were talking loudly and laughing like they were at Disneyland, and I couldn’t stand it.


Building after building was completely or partially collapsed. Many of them were pushed off their foundations by the landslides and stacked up against other buildings. Most structures had a collapsed first story (soft-story again), some had entire walls missing or staircases dangling from strings of rebar. Cars and motorcycles were crushed under concrete monoliths. Some buildings folded like decks of cards. A bridge across the river that led to a tunnel was transformed into a strangely beautiful waterfall arching over the river. This perplexed us for hours until we finally learned that there was a lake on the other side that overflowed due to landsliding and has been pouring out ever since.




There were signs in front of many of the buildings saying who was killed there, showing their haunting faces, and sometimes telling stories of bravery and rescue. The one small bit of humor I found, probably the only bit to be found in the entire city, maybe the entire valley, was a sign outside the building that once housed the "Beichuan State Administration of Taxation." The sign said, and I quote: “A heart devoted to tax career still exists as before, although homes were ruined. The survived employees of Beichuan State Administration of taxation displayed their vigor in the emergency moment and set out to deal with the first tax-involved business in the 15th day after the earthquake…Because of their outstanding performances, one of the survived employees was awarded with glorious title of National Model for Earthquake Emergency Relief”

To cheer us up afterwards, we all stopped at a restaurant for "hot pot" on the way home. Hot pot is a dish that originates in Chengdu where there is a giant bubbling pot built into the table, the outer ring has super spicy broth and the inner ring has mild broth for wimps. The servers bring a giant stand filled with plates of everything imaginable and things you don't want to imagine too, and you throw whatever you want into the boiling pot. They are adding congealed duck blood that I mistaked for jell-o in the picture below. It turned brown once it was cooked and actually tasted quite nice, for what it was.