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Two powerful earthquakes shake China's Gansu Province, killing at least eight

"It was chaos. People were running out of their homes and into the night."

Resident of Yonggus township

Two powerful tremors shook a remote, earthquake-prone region of northwestern China, killing eight people and seriously injuring dozens of others, the government said yesterday. Local officials reported collapsed houses and scores of minor aftershocks.

Authorities also lowered water levels on two reservoirs in the area, saying they feared flooding after they spotted cracks on dams after the quakes.

The earthquakes -- measured at magnitudes 6.1 and 5.8, respectively on the Richter scale -- hit a desert area of Gansu Province at 8:41pm and 8:48pm Saturday, the official Xinhua News Agency reported from Lanzhou, the provincial capital.

It said another 30 people were seriously hurt and 17 more suffered minor injuries. Gansu's seismological bureau said it expected more reports of wounded.

The hardest-hit areas were Minle and Shandan counties near the city of Zhangye, roughly 1,400km west Beijing. The death toll, initially listed as four, doubled yesterday afternoon after four missing people were found in rubble of collapsed buildings, Xinhua said.

"It was chaos. People were running out of their homes and into the night," a resident of a township called Yonggus said. Reached by telephone yesterday, he gave only his surname, Zhang.

The two stricken counties are located in an earthquake-prone area. In 1954, a 7.3-magnitude quake rumbled through Shandan County, killing 50 people.

Xinhua, quoting the provincial seismological bureau, said 30 percent of houses near the quakes' epicenter were damaged severely and that 90 percent of buildings in Yaozhaizi, a small village in Yonggu township, had collapsed.

The Civil Affairs Ministry said "over 10,000 residential rooms collapsed" but didn't specify what that meant. It also said 3,000 head of livestock were either killed or hurt and that schools, grain warehouses and bridges were damaged.

The water release from the Shuangshusi and Zhaizhaizi reservoirs in Minle County began minutes after the quakes and continued through the night, Xinhua said. Nearly 6-million-m2 of water had been released by yesterday morning.

The region has experienced snow and below-freezing temperatures in recent days, lending urgency to relief efforts and the erecting of temporary shelters.

"Most people slept outside last night. They wanted to make sure their houses didn't collapse on them," said Lu Jinggui, a clerk at a curtain shop in Minle, the largest town in the county that bears its name.

She said the quake damaged her wall with cracks wide enough to insert a chopstick.

"I think everyone will be sleeping outside again tonight -- just to be safe," she said in a telephone interview, noting that most stores in town were shuttered yesterday.

Premier Wen Jiabao (溫家寶) and Vice Premier Hui Liangyu (回良玉) ordered a "quick and full" response by the Civil Affairs Ministry and asked for assistance from the nation's military. Xinhua said 2,000 padded tents were on the way.

"We need to monitor the immediate aftermath of an earthquake like this to determine whether we can expect more major tremors in the near future," said Chen Jianmin, a government seismologist, shown on China Central Television as he left Beijing for the quake-hit area.

The region is located in a narrow corridor between the Gobi Desert and mountains that line the border between the provinces of Gansu and Qinghai.
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