Word: fallen
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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Most of Tangshan's 1 million inhabitants lay sleeping in the early morning hours of July 28,1976. Without warning, at 3:43 a,m., a massive earthquake ripped through the densely populated industrial center and left it a ruin of crumbled buildings, fallen smokestacks and heaps of rubble. Measuring 7,8 on the Richter scale, the quake leveled an area of 20 sq. mi., causing death and destruction without precedent in recorded history: as many as 750,000 are estimated to have died in the catastrophe...
...center for a gargantuan relief effort. Should be, but isn't. Trucks carrying food and water ply the rough road leading to this isolated town, but not in the large convoys associated with a disaster of this scale. Laputta's buildings are collapsed or roofless, its streets clogged with fallen trees, smashed boats, and the rain-soaked debris of thousands of desperate families. Local aid workers estimate that 12,000 people have died and 3,000 are missing in Laputta town and its immediate surroundings...
...brick and concrete are missing their roofs. Houses of wood or straw are all but destroyed. In stricken delta towns like Kungyangon, Dedaye and Pyapon, almost every structure is damaged, many beyond repair. In Bogalay itself, no building is untouched. The streets are flanked by broken power lines, fallen trees and other debris...
...counted more than 30 government or army trucks plying the road, all apparently empty, and perhaps a dozen trucks carrying wood meant for house-building. There was one small group of soldiers trying to clear away the fallen power lines, another helping locals bury a decomposing water buffalo, apparently drowned by the same 12-feet-tall surge of water that claimed so many human victims...
...worker who was in Rangoon recalls seeing just one military truck on the streets in the hours after the cyclone. The vehicle drove up to a downed tree blocking the road, paused and then left. The following day, the foreigner saw a group of about 20 soldiers tackle another fallen tree armed with nothing but a machete and a single handsaw...