On April 14th, a 7.1-magnitude earthquake hit China's Qinghai Province and killed hundreds of people. Two days later, the first rescue team organized by 20 staff from Guangxi Liugong Machinery Co., Ltd. (LiuGong) arrived in Yushu disaster area, conducting relief work following the local rescue team to search for survived people.

After the earthquake occurred suddenly on the morning of April 14th, there had been 1484 people die, 361 people miss and more than 12,000 people wounded in the disaster until 17:00 p.m. of April 17th. 90% of the households in the county collapsed and a large number of local residences were still stuck in ruins. For lacking in large scaled equipment, the rescue work was proceeding rather slowly in the initial phase.

People from all walks of life kept concerning about the disaster area. Not long after the earthquake happened, the supervisors from LiuGong made the instructions to LiuGong Qinghai Office to rapidly organize required equipment, marching forward the disaster area to assist in the rescue work. Based on the experience of the relief work after earthquake before, the supervisors of LiuGong asked the rescue team to go ahead toward the disaster area at the fastest speed. According to the introduction of Lu Zeng, Manager of LiuGong Qinghai Office, once they got the instructions from the supervisors, they acted immediately to assembly the existing 7sets of equipment. One of the problems emerged that most of the transportation vehicles in Xining had been used already so that the rescue team of LiuGong had to call in transportation vehicles from other cities in Qinghai. During this calling-in process, the rescue team received the substantial support from local dealers and customers. “It cost us a quite long time to find suitable board vehicles,” Lu Zeng explained. 

The first batch of rescuing equipment from LiuGong was consisted of seven sets of loaders, of whose models were all 50C. The rescue team went with the machines were totally 20 professional staff. Lu Zeng took charge of delivering the last equipment. He told the media that the advance team had already arrived in the disaster area and successfully contacted with the local command department for rescue and had arranged everything ready to get engaged in the rescue work. The local rescue department showed their great appreciation to the fast arrival of LiuGong rescue team.   

At present, the second rescue team from LiuGong Gansu and Shaanxi Offices had marched toward the disaster area on April 16th as well.

It was not the first time for LiuGong to take part in earthquake rescue work. During the Wenchuan Earthquake happened in 2008, LiuGong rescue teams went to the disaster area with a great number of rescuing equipment and technical staff, receiving the high praise and appreciation from the leaders of military area and people from the disaster area.

About LiuGong 

Founded in 1958, Guangxi Liugong Machinery Co., Ltd. (LiuGong) is China’s leading construction equipment manufacturer and the first stock-listed company in domestic industry. Employing more than 6000 people and with 2006 revenues of 5.18 billion RMB, including 67.3 million USD from exports, LiuGong is the world’s second largest wheel loader manufacturer for annually outputting more than 20,000 units.