Powerful Earthquake Hits China’s Countryside, Kill Over 100
A magnitude-6.2 earthquake struck one of China's poorest regions just before midnight on Monday, killing at least 127 people, injuring hundreds and bringing down mud houses in remote villages that never stood a chance.
Chinese state media arriving at the sixth commune of Dahe village, one of the worst-hit areas in China's northwestern Gansu province, found many houses were either at risk of collapse or had already crumbled to the ground, especially homes built from earth and clay.
"I've lived for more than 80 years and had never seen such a big earthquake," said an old man who was being carried out of his damaged home by rescuers.
More than 155,000 homes in Gansu were either damaged or destroyed.
At 11:59 p.m. (local time) on Monday, the quake rocked Gansu's Jishishan county, at a depth of 10 km (6.2 miles). The epicentre was 5 km from the provincial border straddling Gansu and Qinghai, where strong tremors were also felt.
Authorities have mobilised an array of emergency responses after the quake wrecked roads and infrastructure, triggered landslides, and half-buried magnitude 8.0 a village in silt. But rescue work has proved challenging in sub-zero temperatures, after a powerful cold snap swept across the country.
Earthquakes are common in provinces such as Gansu, lying on the northeastern boundary of the tectonically active Qinghai-Tibetan plateau. China's deadliest quake in recent decades was in 2008 when one of magnitude-8.0 struck Sichuan, killing nearly 70,000 people.
In Gansu, 113 were killed as of 1:00 p.m. Tuesday (local time), and 536 were injured, authorities said.
The death tally in Qinghai stood at 14 with 198 injured, as of 4:50 p.m. (local time).
Officially, 20 people remained missing.
About 2,200 personnel from the Gansu provincial fire department and 900 from the forest brigade, as well as 260 professional emergency rescue workers, were dispatched to the disaster zone, the Xinhua news agency reported, adding that hundreds from the military and police were also deployed.
The province, which has allocated USD 2.8 million to the local government for the emergency response, also sent supplies that included 2,600 cotton tents, 10,400 folding beds, 10,400 quilts, 10,400 cotton mattresses and 1,000 sets of stoves.
County officials from Jishishan, with a population of about 260,000 people spread across numerous villages and townships, said the local government, lacking resources, had to rely on the provincial government. Gansu is among the poorest provinces in China.
(REUTERS)
