State television broadcast tips for anyone trapped in the earthquake.
“If you’re buried, keep calm and conserve your energy. Seek water and food, and wait patiently for rescue,” CCTV said.
The earthquake also rattled buildings in Beijing 1,500km to the north. The Chinese capital is expected to be full of hundreds of thousands of foreign visitors when the Olympic Games start on Aug. 8.
Many Beijing office towers were evacuated, including the building housing the media offices for the organizers of the Olympics, which start in August. None of the Olympic venues was damaged.
Premier Wen Jiabao (溫家寶) arrived in Chengdu just before sunset to oversee rescue work.
People ran screaming into the streets in other cities, where many residents said they had never been in an earthquake. In Fuyang, 1,100km to the east in Anhui Province, chandeliers in the lobby of the Buckingham Palace Hotel swayed.
“We’ve never felt anything like this our whole lives,” said a hotel employee surnamed Zhu.
Patients at the Fuyang People’s No. 1 Hospital were evacuated. An hour after the quake, a half-dozen patients in blue-striped pajamas stood outside the hospital. One was laying on a hospital bed in the parking lot.
Closer to the epicenter in Chongqing, Lai Dequn was napping while her mother watched TV on the 19th floor of a hotel.
“I suddenly felt the bed shaking and then realized it must be an earthquake,” the 42-year-old Lai said. “So I just put on slippers and helped my mother down to the ground floor.”
In Shanghai, skyscrapers swayed and most office occupants went rushing into the streets. The quake was also felt as far away as Thailand, Vietnam and Pakistan.
A magnitude 7.8 earthquake is considered a major event, capable of causing widespread damage and injuries in populated areas.
The last serious earthquake in China was in 2003, when a 6.8-magnitude quake killed 268 people in Bachu County in the west of Xinjiang.
China’s deadliest earthquake in modern history struck the northeastern city of Tangshan on July 28, 1976, killing 240,000 people. Yesterday’s quake was thought to be more powerful.
The quake was also felt in Taiwan at around 2:38pm yesterday. It measured 1.0 and lasted for about two minutes.
Hsiao Nai-chi (蕭乃祺), a specialist at the Central Weather Bureau (CWB), said yesterday that the center of the earthquake was located within a tectonic plate, which is very different from regular earthquakes that occur in Taiwan.
The epicenters of the earthquakes generally fall on the rims of tectonic plates, he said.
The energy released through the earthquake was five times greater than that of the 921 earthquake in 1999, which measured 7.3.
Lu Pei-ling (呂佩玲), deputy director of the Central Weather Bureau’s seismology center, further explained why an earthquake in Sichuan could generate repercussions in Taiwan.
“The surface waves of the earthquake are able to travel a long distance,” she said. “So you can feel the tremor not only in Sichuan, but also in Beijing as well.”
The Travel Agents Association estimated that about 2,360 Taiwanese tourists are in Sichuan.
Additional reporting by Shelley Shan
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