ASM
Remote Sensors Speed China Earthquake Rescue
Satellite imagery is being used extensively by rescue authorities in China in their desperate race to save people caught by the earthquake that struck Sichuan on 12 May.
While many people were killed directly by falling buildings during the earthquake, many more will die over then next week or so of starvation, dehydration, exposure and disease, unless rescue authorities can get help to them soon.
| An image from Geoeye's Ikonos satellite of the Zipingpu Dam, upriver from the town of Dujiangyan, Sichuan, China. On 14 May, thousands of Chinese troops rushed to plug cracks in the dam. |
The death toll from the earthquake could soar to more than 50,000, state media reported on 15 May. Some 20,000 are confirmed dead after Monday's 7.9 magnitude quake and 25,000 were buried in areas rescuers have struggled to reach, battling landslides, buckled roads and collapsed bridges.
Half the buildings in Yingxiu, close to the epicentre, have been flattened and 90 per cent of the buildings remaining look unsafe.
The biggest problem is not manpower. Apart from a mass of volunters that have entered the striken region the Chinese armed forces have been fully mobilised.
The real problem for rescue authorities is knowing how to use the resources they have available as wisely as possible and as quickly as possible.
Chinese aircraft have been carrying out regular reconaissance missions over the area. China's own satellites have been pressed into service, although some reports from the Chinese Remote Sensing centre said cloud during an overpass by CBERS had reduced the usefulness of data from that source.
Japan's JAXA has provided imagery from its Diachi advanced earth observation satellite. Chinese specialists were busy analysing the JAXA images in a bid to assess the scale of the damage, Xinhua news agency reported.
China has also activated the International Charter on Space and Major Disasters. This gives access to 18 satellites run by the European Space Agency, France, Canada, India, the US, Argentina, Japan and the UK.
Canada has agreed to schedule a flyover by Radarsat on Friday, according to a report in the Hong Kong-based South China Morning Post.
Academics at National Taiwan Normal University have handed images of the Sichuan area to colleagues at the Chinese Academy of Sciences. The images were sourced from the Formosat-2 spacecraft, which passed over the area two days after it was hit by the 7.9 magnitude earthquake.
There are two images. One shows Beichuan, one of the worst hit areas in Sichuan province, in May 2006. The other was taken on 14 May 2008, two days after the disaster.
They show a large forest, a school and clusters of residential houses along a river. They had all been wiped out by the quake, and a road along the river was severely damaged.
