Rescue teams yesterday rushed to a popular tourist spot in eastern China after a powerful earthquake killed at least 13 people in the region and left hundreds of others injured, officials said.
Seven teams had been dispatched to the worst-hit areas to bring food, water and tents to the hundreds of thousands of people caught up in Saturday's quake, said Cao Junliang (
The official Xinhua news agency said yesterday that 13 people had died and more than 450 were injured in the 5.7-magnitude quake, believed to be the strongest to strike the region in half a century.
PHOTO: AFP
Initially 14 people were thought to have died and some newspapers yesterday reported that the toll was as high as 16.
Most of the dead were in and around the cities of Jiujiang and Ruichang in Jiangxi Province, although there was at least one fatality in Wuxue, a city in neighboring Hubei Province.
Chinese Prime Minister Wen Jiabao (
camping out
In both Jiujiang and Ruichang, thousands of people yesterday crowded city streets, preparing to spend another night outside due to fears of aftershocks.
In and around Ruichang, a total of 420,000 people initially left their homes, apparently fearing that Saturday's morning quake might not be the last, according to the Xinhua Web site.
Many people remained in the streets yesterday, although shops and restaurants were open. Some played cards and mahjong, enjoying the sunny weather, with temperatures at about 17?C.
Officials handed out tents to those in need. Police and army personnel were seen in the streets.
Ruichang's main hospital moved dozens of patients into a makeshift tent outside the facility, separated into two sections -- one for those injured in the earthquake and another for regular patients.
In and around the city, most houses had suffered severe structural damage, with huge cracks in the walls, roofs torn apart and verandahs collapsed.
Officials said on Saturday that thousands of homes had been flattened in the quake.
Huge sinkholes measuring about 20m across and 5m deep pocked fields in rural areas.
The quake, which could be felt in cities hundreds of kilometers apart, occurred at 8:49am on Saturday, causing hundreds of thousands of people to flee their homes.
`shallow' quake
The US Geological Survey said the quake occurred about 10km below the earth's surface.
That makes it a so-called "shallow" earthquake, similar to the devastating quake that struck Kashmir in early October, a category of tremor generally known to cause greater damage than deeper ones.
Jiujiang is home to half a million people and a traditional scenic spot that was praised by Tang dynasty poets more than a millennium ago.
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