Two months after a devastating earthquake rocked China's Sichuan province, 46 million people are homeless and in dire need of help rebuilding their lives, says the Canadian leader of the International Red Cross relief effort.

Millions of displaced people have been living in donated tents since the 8.0-magnitude quake rocked the southern part of the country on May 12. Now victims need help rebuilding their homes so they can begin returning to normalcy, said Yunhong Zhang, the agency's Asia Program Manager.

"As this two-month anniversary approaches, there is still an enormous amount of work to be done," Zhang, who recently returned from five weeks in Sichuan province, told CTV.ca.

"There is a lot of rubble everywhere," she said, describing driving from village to village and seeing only piles of rubble occasionally punctuated by a rare standing building.

"There's only a couple of standing houses. The Chinese call them standing debris -- they are still standing up but too risky to live in. They look fine at first but when you get close you see the big cracks."

The Red Cross was one of the first agencies to respond to the disaster and has 180,000 relief workers still posted there two months later. The agency has provided 7,000 tents to affected communities and plans to provide long-term recovery assistance.

Zhang said most earthquake are living in dense tent camps, while some have begun to move into the small huts being constructed as temporary housing. Many have lost everything they have and almost everyone has lost loved ones -- including many of the people working on the relief effort.

"The four ladies we hired in the kitchen, they all lost their family members," she said. "One lady we hired, she worked so hard. We learned she had lost her daughter. She just worked so hard so she didn't have a moment to think about what she had lost.

"She kept everything so clean... The impact is not something very easily described."

China has said almost 70,000 people have been confirmed dead and 374,176 were injured by the earthquake. Almost 20,000 people are considered missing.

The quake sent buildings tumbling to the ground, left dams in disarray and buried thousands of people alive. Thousands more were forced out of their homes after flooding overtook many of the distressed areas just weeks after the earthquake.

Despite the chaos left by the disaster, Zhang described the relief effort as "very well-organized," saying the government and relief work community have come together to provide for the people who need their help.

"I think the response for the government has been remarkable," she added. "Everywhere you go... all the market is full of fresh food, the price is very stable."

There haven't been any reported epidemics, she said.

"It's remarkable considering the scale of the earthquake and this heat. A few days ago it was 46 degrees, too hot for the victims to even stay inside their tents."

The Canadian and Ontario governments each pledged $1 million in aid after the quake. The federal government also promised to match private donations made between May 15 and June 6. resulting in an additional $24 million for the cause.

According to the recovery plan devised by the Chinese government and the Chinese Red Cross, construction of permanent homes and other buildings will begin within one to three years. They expect the full relief effort to last at least five years.

That amount of time can seem like an eternity for people already coping with the grief of losing so much of what they once had, said Zhang.

"You sense a lot of grief and some are angry as well," she said. "It's good to see that their basic needs have been taken care of, but people are understandably eager to rebuild lives as soon as possible."

Yunhong Zhang and the ERU (Emergency Response Unit) work to help those in need in Sichuan province, China. (Canadian Red Cross) Members of a medical team from the Hunan Provincial Red Cross Society, treating a patient at a temporary medical centre set up for earthquake survivors in Shifang, Sichuan. (Sho Huang / International Federation) Lunchtime means instant noodles in the tent that Xiao Wei shares with his extended family, as his uncle Wang Tingzhao, feeds his little daughter, Wang Fangyi, with grandfather Yang Tingzhi looking on. (Sho Huang / International Federation) www.ctv.ca/servlet/ArticleNews/print/CTVNews/20080711/china_quake_080712/20080712/