Southland Groups Mobilize Relief : Disaster: They seek to provide aid to quake victims--and information to kin in U.S.

By JOHN L. MITCHELL

Sept. 22, 1999 12 AM PT

TIMES STAFF WRITER

The photographs from Taiwan of toppled apartment buildings and twisted roads made Josie Wang, a manager of the Taiwan Business Bank in Los Angeles, cringe.

“Everybody is worried about their families,” said Wang, one of an estimated 250,000 first-generation immigrants from mainland China and Taiwan living in Los Angeles County. “No one slept good. We all wanted to find out what was going on. We wanted to help.”

Frustrated at their inability to get through by phone, many began scouring the Internet and television for clues to the fate of relatives after Tuesday’s quake, which killed more than 1,700 people and left more than 100,000 others homeless.

By late Tuesday, aid was being organized by churches, charities and social groups across Southern California.

Officials from Operation USA, which has organized a relief effort to help the victims of last month’s earthquake in Turkey, announced plans to divert 35,000 pounds of medical supplies from that emergency to victims in Taiwan. The emergency supplies are being stored in a Wilmington warehouse.

“We are contacting the Taiwan government to get approval for shipping the supplies,” said Neil Frame, a spokesman for the Los Angeles-based relief organization. “We want to make sure that what we have is what they need.”

In other areas, residents were still waiting anxiously to hear how their relatives had fared. They dialed telephones endlessly but could not get through because all lines were busy.

“I called yesterday in the early afternoon, then in the late afternoon and also in the evening,” said Richard Chan, a Huntington Beach resident who works at a Stanton printing business. “I will try again tonight. . . . It’s very difficult.”

Chan, who immigrated to the United States in 1965, said about half of his family is still in Taiwan, mostly in Taipei and Keelung, a port at the northern end of the island. He reached one brother in Keelung, but there has been no other news.

Cherry Lai of Irvine said it took her 12 hours to get in touch with her family.

“I started calling at about 4 [p.m.] and didn’t get through until 4 o’clock in the morning,’ Lai said. “It was so emotionally draining, you know, because you don’t know what’s going on.”

Others found a roundabout way to reach relatives. Grace Cheng, a Brea resident with family in Taipei, said she called relatives in New Zealand to get news about those in Taiwan.

Some in the local business community expressed concern about how the disaster might affect commerce, said Jerry Lai, treasurer for the Orange County Chinese-American Chamber of Commerce.

For Orange County’s flourishing high-tech industry, he said, “supplies could be affected. . . . But Taiwan does play a very important role in the computer and chip production business.”

Times staff writer Thao Hua contributed to this report.

How to Help

These aid agencies are among the many accepting contributions for assistance to victims of the earthquake in Taiwan.

American Jewish World Service

989 Avenue of the Americas

10th Floor

New York, NY 10018

Tel: (800) 889-7146

https://www.ajws.org

American Red Cross

International Response Fund

P.O. Box 37243