Preparing for the worst

One survivor of the Wenchuan earthquake is teaching young people about disaster preparedness at a learning center in Chengdu. Li Yingxue reports.

Ten years ago, on the afternoon of May 12, 18-year-old Dai Guohong was sitting in his classroom when a crack suddenly emerged, splitting open the floor in front of the blackboard.

Dai watched as his teacher fell into the crack, and a few seconds later, he watched his own legs were also sucked into the crack beneath his feet. The crack then shut abruptly, leaving Dai's legs stuck in the middle. Unable to wrestle free, Dai tried to grab the desk and chair near him to make more room as the lights and ceiling began to fall onto him.

This was the Wenchuan earthquake, which destroyed Beichuan High School, in Beichuan county, southwest China's Sichuan province.

After the earthquake, Dai and his classmates initially sang songs and chatted to each other to keep their spirits up, as they lay trapped in the rubble waiting to be rescued. But the room gradually began to fall quiet and Dai was forced to drink his own blood to keep awake.

More than 50 hours after the earthquake, Dai was eventually rescued. He was the only survivor from his class, and his legs had to be amputated.

On May 12, 2018, Dai showed up to attend the opening ceremony of the Disaster Preparedness Learning Center Chengdu in Sichuan province, less than 200 kilometers away from Beichuan.

He is the first volunteer commentator at the center, which he hopes will help more people, especially the young, to be better prepared for disasters.

"I trained the staff at the center in March, and will come back when it's officially open to teach more people about earthquake preparedness," Dai says.

In the wake of the earthquake, it was a long process for Dai to recover physically and mentally. Life education helped him to get back into society, and he started to promote life education in 2016.

"I do experimental life education, so I hope this can be combined with the disaster preparedness experience at the learning center," says Dai.

The Disaster Preparedness Learning Center Chengdu is located at the Jiulidi campus of the Chengdu Youth Palace. The learning center focuses on education about how to survive earthquakes, fires, floods and geological disasters, as well as teaching daily life safety and running a survival park and workshops on these subjects.

The learning center project has been pushed forward by One Foundation, a charity founded by Chinese actor Jet Li, who also attended the opening ceremony.