Digital Journal -- Officials in China say the death toll after yesterday's quake is nearing 12,000, roads are cluttered with people and rubble from fallen buildings and rescuers work around the clock to find victims.
In an interesting development for communist China, citizen journalists are being credited with breaking news of the quake and helping to disseminate information across the Web (see previous coverage from DigitalJournal.com citizen journalist, momentsintime).
Reports indicate the Internet was abuzz after the quake rocked China.
Yesterday's reports are a stark contrast of the series of events that took place 32 years ago when a 7.8 magnitude quake that killed an estimated 240,000 people hit Tangshan, as reports on the event were few and far between. Today's China, while not totally transparent, is far more open than anything the world has seen.
The news of yesterday's quake broke on Twitter, a site where citizens can post very short updates via their cellphones. Tales like this one painted a grim picture of the event, as this citizen journalist writes "feeling gloomy, sad and powerless. so many children under collapsed schools," and "breathing normal again. feeling an earthquake on the 31st floor was not fun."
The Web was quickly flooded with maps, personal accounts of shaking buildings and evacuations, videos and photos.
As the Telegraph reports:
Videos of children hiding under desks and of the thousands of office workers congregating outside their buildings soon made their way onto YouTube, while a rolling account of the day's events was soon up on Shanghaiist, a Shanghai city website.
Shanghaiist posted 90 updates to the story, and started a rumour that the authorities had prior warning of the earthquake which provoked an official rebuke and more chatter across blogs.
The website gathered together material as diverse as reports that spy satellite images of the region were being used in the rescue operation, to the fact that Monday was Buddha's birthday, to a posting about how people killed in the earthquake were "victims of China's economic miracle."
China's new transparency is being attributed to the upcoming Olympic Games. The country has at least 29 journalists in prison (19 of them bloggers) according to the Telegraph, and critics say the government has recognized it needs to ease up on its reporting restrictions if it wants to host the Games.
A Chinese student hides under his desk, recording the quake with his cellphone:
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