Irwin Allen’s Aftermath

Tuesday morning …
Cell phones are back on line, though a bit spotty due to the expected huge volume of calls.
The airport was closed, but re-opened this morning. It will be a madhouse as all the diverted flights last night plus those normally scheduled to arrive today will all be trying to get here at the same time. Rail Lines are hit and miss. No idea about bus services. Naturally, all travel to quake areas has been suspended. Saw many trucks with bull dozers, etc headed west this morning.

Our guys (US and Chinese) are OK.
Some of our people have family in Dujianyan (essentially the epicenter), but I hear their families all report in OK. Since the cell phone system went down, the biggest enemy to us all was lack of communication with friends/family. That system was back up late last night, so now everyone has made contact and can relax a little.
The rural areas (you know; those “little” towns of 150,000+ people!) are the bad off areas. They will be the ones to struggle. Chengdu (by observation and local news) has very little damage though a few fatalities and some building damage, but those little towns were hit very hard.

However, on a less serious note, we did find some entertainment at the volume of people who refused to sleep indoors last night and camped out on the sidewalks, parks, town squares, etc. These mini refugee camps were everywhere and despite it raining all night, there they slept. As for us - we walked up our 11 flights of stairs and watched CNN and email until 10:30 and then crashed. Felt several aftershocks (the chandelier was our indicator) and even though there was a fairly strong aftershock at 05:00 AM – I slept normally through it (big surprise, huh?).
The weather was cool and breezy (normal for post quake weather? – I don’t know).
We wandered out to dinner and found a nice restaurant that was open. They were serving only a noodle/meat dish which was fine with us – at least it was open. We had a pretty good aftershock during dinner. Many other diners got real nervous and stood up to run, but it ended fairly quickly. We more or less ignored it. Most everything was closed, but those restaurants and quick marts that were open were doing a great job of serving everyone outdoors even if only one or two selections and all had candles in case the power went out. It was actually kind of like a giant street party; but with an “edginess” to it. The normally pushy Chinese folks were all reasonably calm and settled and just camped out/hung out generally peacefully.
Our hotel people were not allowed into hotel until 09:30 PM, but there is an outdoor café type area where they herded all the guests. The good news is that they served food, drinks, beer, etc – all on the house – until the “all clear’ was given. They had no hot water this morning, but other than that, they were OK.

Now we have to check all the machines for levelness, and all of the settings, verify lasers, roundness, other gauges, repair a few air lines and one pipe on a machine that leaked all over the floor, and get back to business. I worry that this will set us back a few days but can’t be sure until our machine guys complete their investigations.
Here is an interesting part … the technician to install and train on our fancy measuring machine (that can measure down to 0.000 008 inch) was here yesterday. Everything was cool until all of a sudden, it went haywire and the display started bouncing all over the place. The technician was very confused as to what was happening and then about 15 seconds later, the whole building starts shaking. So, this unit is now our own personal seismograph as it is apparently sensitive enough to “hear” an earthquake before we can feel it.

Our building came through pretty well. No real damage other than some ceiling tiles, a few broken air lines, some pipe fittings which leaked, 3 lights that fell and other fairly minor stuff. So the new building survived. The plant next door to us had some pretty significant exterior damage.

All in all – an exciting and a little unnerving - adventure. We still hope and pray that the outlying areas come out better than forecasted, but as one of our American team members stated: “We think we have all this technology and we can control our lives and our world, but really, we are just ‘bugs on the windshield’ of the universe.”

True.