In Ventura County, people with connections to China anxiously sought news after the devastating earthquake there Monday.

Ching-Hua Wang, who holds a doctorate and is head of the biology department at CSU Channel Islands, is a native of Beijing. Her aunt and uncle live about 60 miles from the center of the quake. She said they were unhurt, but buildings in their region were damaged, and they "were quite concerned" that the number of casualties could be high.

"I did call them to find out if they are OK," Wang said, adding that they live in Chengdu, near the Huaxi Medical University, where her aunt is a retired professor of anatomy.

"The faculty and students all evacuated, but mostly because the ceiling tiles were coming out of the roof on the campus. They are setting up camp in the playgrounds and the gardens around the campus. The buildings all seem to be OK there, though. There are not many casualties in Chengdu."

In comparison, she said, Wenchuan, an area of about 100,000 near the epicenter, suffered far worse effects, including the collapse of Jinjiang District People's Hospital.

"The earthquake hit in the middle of the afternoon, so the hospital was full," she said. "It collapsed on the doctors and the patients."

In Thousand Oaks, Jim Duan, principal of Thousand Oaks Chinese School, said "a lot of parents expressed their worries and wanted to make a donation and have called me."

The Saturday-only school, which uses facilities at Thousand Oaks High School, teaches the Mandarin language to 650 children.

"There will be some students who have family there, but they do not know yet; in a lot of the area the communication is not so good. We have some people from Sichuan province, the earthquake center," Duan said.

"I have e-mailed the teachers and asked them ... to make some suggestion about how we can contribute to the victims," Duan said.

"The students don't have money themselves, but we want them to show their loving for others by donating their snack money; hopefully they can make a difference," he added. "Hopefully we can ask the community in the Conejo Valley to help us."

The group will set up a table Saturday at Thousand Oaks High School to accept donations.

Karen Eckhardt, director of public support for the Ventura County chapter of the American Red Cross, said the organization can help people get information or make donations.

"If people want to make a donation specifically for the quake relief in China, that's where it will go," she said.

She recommends that people go to http://www.redcross.org, "and go to the donations' box, and there is a specific area for the international response fund."

She said the same Web site can help people searching for loved ones in China by clicking on the "register as safe and well" button.