An earthquake-hit area of southwest China faces coal shortages after underground mining was suspended as a safety precaution, AP quoted authorities and state media as sayihg Tuesday. The magnitude 5.7 quake the provinces of Sichuan and Yunnan on Saturday killed at least 38 people, according to figures from local officials. Nearly 400,000 homes were damaged, while 181,000 people were evacuated to safety, the Ministry of Civil Affairs said. The government has allocated 27 million yuan (US$3.96 million) from its emergency relief fund to Sichuan and Yunnan, the ministry said in a statement on its Web site. Liu Kangjian, the vice mayor of Sichuan's Panzhihua city near the epicenter of the quake, called for coal from neighboring provinces to avoid threatened power cuts, Xinhua reported. The city halted all underground mining operations immediately after the earthquake and had enough coal to last only for three days, Liu was cited as saying. Authorities also repeated appeals for more temporary housing. «Since the houses in the quake-hit areas were generally built of mud, many collapsed or were damaged,» said Wu Jingping, the Communist Party secretary in Sichuan province's Liangshan prefecture, which includes hard-hit Huili county. «The most important and most urgent problem that needs to be solved is how to help the earthquake victims rebuild their homes,» Wu was cited as saying in comments posted on the prefecture's official Web site. State broadcaster China Central Television showed simple mud houses with walls that had crumbled in the quake. The footage showed residents sheltering in small blue tents, while others who were apparently injured were being treated in a large tent. Panzhihua needed 970,000 square feet (90,000 square meters) of temporary housing and 15,000 tents, the official Xinhua News Agency reported, citing the local civil affairs bureau. The city also needed 65,000 quilts. The temblor Saturday struck along the same fault line as a May 12 earthquake that killed nearly 70,000. On Monday night, CCTV aired a program on emergency survival, presented by NBA star Yao Ming and other Chinese Olympic athletes. The show coincided with the beginning of the school year in China. Many students whose schools were destroyed or damaged in the May 12 quake have returned to school in temporary classrooms.
