Unless you were riding on the Mars lander this May, you know that the largest earthquake ever to hit land shook the Sichuan province in China to its core on May 12. As I write this piece, about two weeks later, I am sitting stranded in the Chengdu airport, about an hour’s drive from Wenchuan, the epicenter of the quake. Well, it would be an hour if there were roads to get there, which there aren’t.

And no, I’m not stranded because of the quake. I’m stranded because of the incredible rain storm pounding this quake-shaken area and much of China. [Note: We finally took off two hours late, which is much better than staying overnight, since everyone had been directed to sleep outside in the rain due to the aftershocks.]

As a long-time resident of California, I consider myself to be a seasoned disaster survivor. I directly experienced the Northridge quake in Los Angeles, two sets of Malibu/Calabasas fires, and the San Diego fires each of the last two years. And I was in the Bay Area during the Oakland Hills fires and shortly after the Loma Prieta earthquake. But nothing prepared me for the devastation, death and destruction here in China.

The airport TV shows images of the devastation as well as huge tent villages containing some of the five million homeless. To make matters worse, over 34 “quake lakes” have formed, caused by landslides blocking some of the surrounding 400+ rivers. Already a severe hazard, the lakes are filling rapidly now with runoff from the rain. The government seems somewhat schizophrenic about the dilemma, alternately declaring that everything is “under control” and that it must act quickly to divert the deluge that might further add to the death count.
I’m watching images on the airport TV of collapsed bridges, active landslides, flattened villages, fallen buildings, trucks smashed by boulders, and huge tent villages containing some of the five million homeless. Many of these images were taken from an ultra-light aircraft or riverboat, often the only way to reach the affected areas.

To make matters worse, over 34 “quake lakes” have formed, caused by landslides blocking some of the surrounding 400+ rivers. Already a severe hazard, the lakes are filling even more rapidly now with runoff from the rain. The government seems somewhat schizophrenic about the dilemma, alternately declaring that everything is “under control” and that it must act quickly to divert the deluge that might further add to the death count.

But life goes on. Today we visited a contract research organization here that had been hit by the quake. They had maintained uninterrupted operations, although we watched a video of an animal room as the beagles were shaken about, but unharmed. In fact, a couple of them were incessantly waging their tails – maybe a nervous response much like humans laughing when they are frightened.

What does all of this have to do with biomedtech? Not much really – other than we in the industry are very lucky. We have our health and some of us even a little wealth or at least a steady income, and we don’t worry too much about death from disasters – even in California. So maybe it’s time to give a little bit back to the less fortunate, and help China recover from the greatest disaster the world has seen in over 30 years, when a 7.6 earthquake shook Tangsang, China in 1976 and killed 240,000.

Disclosure: none.