Strong quake in northwestern China kills at least 131 people

Strong quake in northwestern China kills at least 131 people

BEIJING — A strong overnight earthquake rattled a mountainous region of northwestern China, authorities said Tuesday, reducing homes to rubble, leaving residents outside in a below-freezing winter night and killing 131 people in the nation’s deadliest quake in nine years.

The magnitude 6.2 earthquake struck just before midnight on Monday, injuring more than 700 people, damaging roads and knocking out power and communication lines in Gansu and Qinghai provinces, officials and Chinese media reports said.

As emergency workers searched for the missing in collapsed buildings and at least one landslide, people who lost their homes spent a cold winter night in tents at hastily erected evacuation sites.

“I just feel anxious, what other feelings could there be?” said Ma Dongdong, who noted in a phone interview that three bedrooms in his house had been destroyed and a part of his milk tea shop was cracked wide open.

Afraid to return home because of aftershocks, he spent the first night in a field with his wife, two children and some neighbors, where they made a fire to stay warm. In the early morning, they went to a tent settlement that Ma said was housing about 700 people. As of mid-afternoon, they were waiting for blankets and warm clothing to arrive.

The earthquake struck at a relatively shallow depth of 10 kilometers (6 miles) in Gansu’s Jishishan county, about 5 kilometers (3 miles) from the provincial boundary with Qinghai, the China Earthquake Networks Center said. The U.S. Geological Survey measured the magnitude at 5.9.

State broadcaster CCTV said 113 were confirmed dead in Gansu and another 536 injured in the province. Eighteen others were killed and 198 injured in Qinghai, in an area north of the epicenter, CCTV said in an update early Wednesday.

There were nine aftershocks measuring magnitude 3.0… Read more