An earthquake halfway across the world has shaken some area residents.

Bonnie Girard, who lives in Petersburg, is working in Jiangsu, in eastern China, about 600 miles from the epicenter.

She is co-owner and president of China Channel Ltd., a consulting company that helps Virginia companies and the state do business in China. She lived in China for 14 years and still spends more than half of the year there. Girard said she is quite familiar with the earthquake area, which described as mountainous and scenic.

She's been watching Chinese television reports of the devastation almost nonstop since the news broke.

"It's heart-rending," she said in a cell-phone interview from Jiangsu. "I'm impressed at the degree of organization, the effort and the amount of information being broadcast by the media on a constant basis. There are loads of live, unscripted interviews," which Girard said is unusual on Chinese TV news.

Min Zhang, a pharmacology researcher at Virginia Commonwealth University, has relatives in Chengdu, about 90 kilometers from the epicenter. She called them after hearing about the earthquake.

"The center of the city is fine," she said. "They felt 10 to 20 minutes of shaking. But fortunately the house did not fall down and people did not get hurt."

Her relatives lost power for several hours, but it was quickly restored, she said.

Zhang's parents live in nearby Guiyang province and also felt the shaking. "But everything is fine.

"It's just unbelievable," she said. "There has never been anything like this."

Tracy Baird, Public Relations Coordinator of the Greater Richmond Chapter of the American Red Cross, said the organization had not received any requests to locate relatives or to donate aid. "We don't know much yet. There is a lot of infrastructure damage. But the Chinese Red Cross is very strong."
Contact Lisa Crutchfield at (804) 649-6362 or lcrutchfield@timesdispatch.com.