Thousands of rescuers were deployed in southwest China yesterday after a strong earthquake left one person dead and more than 300 injured, with more than 100,000 displaced, state-run media reported.
The shallo, magnitude 6 tremor struck late on Tuesday in Yunnan Province, close to China’s borders with Myanmar and Laos, Xinhua news agency said.
School buildings in the area were widely damaged, reports said, although the quake struck at the night and no pupil deaths were recorded.
Photo: AFP
Xinhua said 100 schools were damaged and cited a local official as saying that an estimated 170,000m2 of buildings needed repairs.
School construction is a touchy subject in China, where more than 5,000 children died after their schools collapsed on top of them in a huge 2008 earthquake in neighboring Sichuan Province. Shoddy buildings in which corruption played a key role were widely blamed, provoking public anger.
As of yesterday, Tuesday’s quake was thought to have taken only one life so far, Xinhua said, citing local officials.
More than 124,000 people had been forced from their homes by the quake, Xinhua added, but there had been “little to no rain” in the region in recent days, reducing the risk of landslides.
“Many houses collapsed and we are investigating the casualties,” a local official told Xinhua. “The aftershocks seem non-stopping.”
Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) and Premier Li Keqiang (李克強) were both quoted by state media urging rescue efforts, with 3,200 troops dispatched in a “race to save more lives,” according to Xinhua.
More than 800 firefighters were taking part in the effort, as were 35 sniffer dogs, the agency said.
The quake’s focus was in Jinggu County, 85km from Puer City, in a region famous for its tea plantations. The tremor was felt in Yunnan’s capital, Kunming.
China uses a different magnitude scale to the US and Xinhua said the China Earthquake Networks Center measured it as being of magnitude 6.6, while the US Geological Survey put it at 6.
The agency said buildings shook for several seconds, while some towns in the area had lost power supply and telecommunications.
“The whole building was shaking terribly with a loud cracking sound. Plates fell off in the kitchen. We all ran out and the streets are now packed with people,” Li Anqin, a woman living in Weiyuan Town, the county seat of Jinggu, told Xinhua via telephone.
Thousands of homes were also damaged in neighboring Lincang, the news agency said.
Photographs on social media showed damaged houses, cracked walls and fallen roof tiles, and crowds of people gathered outside into the night.
Jinggu County is a densely populated, but underdeveloped area that is home to a number of ethnic minorities. It is also a well-known tourism site, thanks to its local production of Puer tea and population of wild elephants.
Yunnan is acutely vulnerable to earthquakes. The region sees frequent seismic activity from the collision of the Indian and Eurasian tectonic plates, which form the vast Himalayan Mountain range.
In August, a magnitude 6.1 earthquake struck the province, killing more than 600 people, injuring more than 3,000 and leaving more than 80,000 homes completely or partially destroyed.
Rescuers said the destruction did not initially appear to be on the scale of the August quake.
Social media users said the effects were manageable.
“The beautiful town is as usual, aftershocks are constant, but people still live in order. My house is all right,” one local resident wrote microblogging site Sina Weibo.
“It’s scary ... but I’m fine,” wrote another microblogger.
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