05/15/2008
Staff Writer
Former Cony High School teacher Denise O'Toole was teaching her 28 students at 2:28 p.m. on Monday in a fifth-floor classroom in Chengdu, China, when the building she was in began to sway and the plaster crumbled off the walls.
O'Toole and her students were experiencing the impact of an earthquake that measured a magnitude of 7.9. On Wednesday, Chinese government estimates pegged the death toll at 15,000 -- more than the population of Farmingdale, Gardiner, Hallowell and Richmond combined -- and rising. Thousands more, mostly in remote areas, are reported missing.
"I got my 28 students down the stairs and out safely," O'Toole wrote in an e-mail this week. "Many had the instinct to 'duck and cover,' which sadly is why so many children in other schools around this area have been buried in their schools."
Since September 2006, O'Toole has lived in Chengdu, a city of approximately 10 million, which is the provincial capital of the Chinese province Sichuan. The city is 60 miles southeast of Wenchuan County, the epicenter of Monday's temblor. O'Toole teaches English and western history classes at Southwest Jiaotong University, she said.
She taught social studies classes at Cony from 1998 until January 2005, when she left to spend a semester in Chengdu. She returned to Maine and taught at Falmouth High School during the 2005-06 school year.
She also served on the Augusta Planning Board for two years.
While Chengdu was spared from the worst of the damage, the city's residents have been far from unaffected.
"Generally speaking, things don't seem to be too bad here in the city," O'Toole wrote in the e-mail message.
However, early Thursday morning, O'Toole was still feeling the quake's aftershocks.
"It's 2:20 a.m. and I was awakened by an aftershock about an hour ago," she wrote in an e-mail. "I don't think it was one of the more serious ones, but I can't get back to sleep anyhow."
O'Toole said there has been no communication between Chengdu and Wenchuan. "Wenchuan is said to be largely destroyed and this worries me deeply," she wrote.
A former university colleague of hers has taught in Wenchuan for three years, O'Toole said. She has not heard from him since before Monday's earthquake.
"Just three days before the earthquake had been his birthday and he'd told me he was hoping to leave Wenchuan next semester," she wrote.
O'Toole noted rescue teams would have difficulty reaching Wenchuan due to its remote location. She has visited the area three times, O'Toole said. The well-known Wolong Panda Reserve is located in the region.
"To my knowledge, there's only one road in or out of it, in a river valley," she said.
Another colleague, an Italian friend studying Taoism atop a mountain called Qing Cheng Shan was forced to evacuate, O'Toole said. The area is considered holy by Taoists. O'Toole's friend traveled to Chengdu for safety.
The mountainous area suffered more extensive damage, as it is closer to the quake's epicenter, O'Toole said.
O'Toole criticized the Chinese government for cultivating fear among the population, noting that government officials predicted major aftershocks at particular times, she said.
"Of course, no one can predict such things," she wrote. "It just freaks people out."
Matthew Stone -- 623-3811, Ext. 435
mstone@centralmaine.com
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