Video: Mounting death toll from China's quake felt locally

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SEATTLE - News of the devastating 7.9 magnitude quake spread quickly Monday through Seattle's Chinatown and International District. Already civic groups are talking about mobilizing to help quake victims.

"This morning, I tried to call a lot of friends and the line is so busy, you cannot get through," said Yangming Chu, one of the heads of the Seattle Chinese Garden Project.

"Everybody is shaking and wondering what's going on, see if they have friends and family around," said Linh Tran, International District Worker. 

 "We just got the news and we're trying to collect more information," said Joyce Zhou, Asian Counseling and Referral Services. "It's obviously very, very devastating and I know we'll have a lot of clients very, very concerned."

Roughly 70,000 Chinese Americans live in the International District. Asian Counseling and Referral Service usually offers Asian-American and new migrants legal aid, citizenship, jobs, language and others services, but when disaster strikes, the services will expand to assist in sending money or messages to loved ones thru their civic partnerships.

"We have key messages ready for our clients in different languages because we do provide services in 30 different languages," said Zhou.

Those who do not speak English are getting the news primarily off the Internet, but the Seattle Asian community is hopeful that the community will come together to help. 

The Chinese Information and Service Center says local relief efforts are taking shape.

"We have a lot of friends and associates, especially at Microsoft, that we're working with who have relatives from that part of China and we're trying to organize a community-wide response to deal with the situation," said CISC's Alaric Bien.