Quake in western China - 6.9 - USGS

ESMC

kills 400, buries more
10,000 + injured
Death toll - rises to over 600 within 24 hours

By GILLIAN WONG (AP)

4-14-10

BEIJING — A series of strong earthquakes struck a mountainous Tibetan area of western China on Wednesday, killing at least 400 people and injuring more than 10,000 as houses made of mud and wood collapsed, officials said. Many more people were trapped, and the toll was expected to rise.

The largest quake was recorded by the U.S. Geological Survey as magnitude 6.9. In the aftermath, panicked people, many bleeding from their wounds, flooded the streets of a Qinghai province township where most of the homes had been flattened. Students were reportedly buried inside several damaged schools.

Paramilitary police used shovels to dig through the rubble in the town, footage on state television showed. Officials said excavators were not available. Crews worked to repair the damaged road to the nearest airport and clear the way for equipment and rescue teams. Hospitals were overwhelmed, many lacking even the most basic supplies, and doctors were in short supply.

By nightfall, the airport was operating with emergency power and receiving relief flights carrying medical workers and supplies, state media reported.

Downed phone lines, strong winds and frequent aftershocks hindered rescue efforts, said Wu Yong, commander of the local army garrison, who said the death toll "may rise further as lots of houses collapsed."

With many people forced outside, the provincial government said it was rushing 5,000 tents and 100,000 coats and blankets to the mountainous region, with an altitude of around 13,000 feet (4,000 meters) where night time temperatures plunge below freezing.

Workers were racing to release water from a reservoir in the disaster area where a crack had formed after the quake to prevent a flood, according to the China Earthquake Administration.

The Wednesday quake, which struck at 7:49 a.m. local time (2349 GMT, 7:49 p.m. EDT), was centered on Yushu county, in the southern part of Qinghai, near Tibet, with a population of about 100,000, mostly herders and farmers.

Lightly populated by Chinese standards, the region is remote, making the rescue operation logistically difficult. Relief flights, for example, need to carry in spare jet fuel to augment the limited supplies stored at Yushu's airport, the state-run Xinhua News Agency said.

The USGS recorded six temblors in less than three hours, all but one registering 5.0 or higher. The China Earthquake Networks Center measured the largest quake's magnitude at 7.1. Qinghai averages more than five earthquakes a year of at least magnitude 5.0, Xinhua said. They normally do not cause much damage.

Residents fled as the ground shook, toppling houses made of mud and wood, as well as temples, gas stations, electric poles and the top of a Buddhist pagoda in a park, witnesses and state media said. The quake also triggered landslides, Xinhua said.

"Nearly all the houses made of mud and wood collapsed. There was so much dust in the air, we couldn't see anything," said Ren Yu, general manager of Yushu Hotel in Jiegu, the county's main town. "There was a lot of panic. People were crying on the streets. Some of our staff, who were reunited with their parents, were also in tears."

More than 100 guests of the hotel, which was relatively undamaged, were evacuated to open spaces such as public squares, Ren told The Associated Press by phone. Hotel staff also helped in rescue efforts in other buildings, Ren said.

"We pulled out 70 people, but some of them died on the way to the hospital," Ren said.

The death toll rose to about 400 by afternoon, according to China Central Television. Emergency official Pubucairen was quoted as saying that the number of injured has risen to more than 10,000. The official, who goes by only one name, said rescuers were treating the injured at hospitals, race tracks and sports stadiums.

President Hu Jintao sent a vice premier to supervise rescue efforts and more than 5,000 soldiers, medical workers and other rescuers were mobilized, joining 700 soldiers already on the ground, Xinhua said. A message of sympathy also came from the Dalai Lama, the exiled spiritual leader of the often fervently Buddhist Tibetans who is reviled by Chinese leaders.

Yushu and its environs were among the Tibetan areas caught up in the anti-government protests that swept the region in March 2008. Tensions have simmered since, and the region has been closed to foreigners off and on.

CCTV reported that soon after the quake, troops secured banks, oil depots and caches of explosives.

Yushu was for centuries home to important Buddhist monasteries and a trading hub and gateway to central Tibet. In recent years, the government has poured investment into Yushu, opening an airport last year and building a highway to the provincial capital of Xining.

The quake struck along the Longmenshan fault, which runs beneath the mountains that divide the Tibetan plateau to the west and the Sichuan plane to the east. A magnitude-7.9 quake on the fault's eastern edge two years ago left almost 90,000 people dead or missing in Sichuan. Poor design, shoddy construction and the lax enforcement of building codes were found to be rampant.

In Jiegu, about 20 miles (30 kilometers) from the epicenter, the local fire brigade was trying to rescue 20 students stuck inside a school, Kang Zifu, head of the rescue team, told state television. It did not say what type of school it was.

Five students were killed and others trapped in a primary school, a teacher told Xinhua, saying morning classes had not yet started when the quake struck. Another official said students were buried at several primary schools.

More than 85 percent of houses had collapsed in Jiegu, which Tibetans call Gyegu, while large cracks have appeared on buildings still standing, Xinhua cited Zhuohuaxia, a local publicity official, as saying.

"The streets in Jiegu are thronged with panic and full of injured people, with many of them bleeding from their injuries," said Zhuohuaxia, who goes by one name.

A monk named Luo Song from a monastery in Yushu county said his sister who worked at a local orphanage told him three children were sent to a hospital but the facilities lacked equipment.

"There are no doctors, they have only bandages, they can't give injections, they can't put people on intravenous drips," the monk said by phone while on a visit to the southern Chinese city of Shenzhen. Rural hospitals typically are not well equipped.

A local military official, Shi Huajie, told CCTV rescuers were working with limited equipment.

"The difficulty we face is that we don't have any excavators. Many of the people have been buried and our soldiers are trying to pull them out with human labor," Shi said. "It is very difficult to save people with our bare hands."

Associated Press writer Charles Hutzler and researchers Zhao Liang and Yu Bing contributed to this report.

 The 2010 Yushu earthquake was a 6.9 (USGS, EMSC) or 7.1 (Xinhua) magnitude earthquake in Yushu, Qinghai, China, on 14 April 2010.

According to the state-run Xinhua News Agency, about 400 people were killed and about 10,000 were injured.^[3][5] The epicentre was

located in Rima village , Shang Laxiu township , in remote and rugged terrain, near the border of Tibet Autonomous Region. Gyêgu town,

the seat of Yushu, is also near the epicenter.

In Qinghai, many buildings in Gyêgu collapsed.^[6] A vocational school collapsed and trapped many students.The county is located about

240 kilometres (150 mi) north west of the Tibetan town of Qamdo. It is a sparsely populated area on the Tibetan plateau that is regularly
 hit by earthquakes.

In Sichuan, strong shaking could be felt in the counties of Sêrxü, Dêgê, and Baiyü, Garzê Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture. Road damage
was reported in Sêrxü County.

Due to the rough terrain and the fact that landslides have destroyed the infrastructure, the initial rescue operations were undertaken by the

People's Armed Police and soldiers in the People's Liberation Army already stationed in the Tibetan region. The Qinghai provincial

government in a statement said that five thousand tents and 100,000 thick, cotton coats and heavy blankets were being sent to help survivors
 cope with strong winds and near-freezing temperatures of around 6 °C (43 °F).

Officials have warned that aftershocks above magnitude 5.5 are likely to continue.

Chinese President Hu Jintao and Premier Wen Jiabao urged people to try to help those affected by the earthquake.^[13]

 References

Wikinews has related news: 6.9 magnitude earthquake hits western China

People walk on the ruins of collapsed buildings after series of earthquakes
today in Yushu County, northwest China's Qinghai Province. The largest quake was recorded as magnitude 6.9.

What was different about China's quake?

Unlike Haiti and Chile quakes, China's took place in middle of single plate

The Tibetan Plateau was created, along with the Himalayas, about 50 million years ago as part of the Indian subcontinent began to collide with Eurasia.

But this earthquake didn't occur where the two plates that crunched together meet; instead, it occurred within the plateau, explained Randy Baldwin, a geophysicist at the National Earthquake Information Center in Golden, Colo.

INTERACTIVE A dozen killer earthquakes Thousands rattle the Earth daily — but only a few cause utter devastation.

The plateau, where the recent quake occurred, experiences continued uplift from the processes that originally created it, and is also being squeezed by other forces, which create numerous faults in the area. Exactly what fault ruptured in this quake isn't yet known, but Baldwin said it is likely a shallow strike-slip type of fault, in which the two sides of the fault slide past each other to release pent-up energy.

"It's an active area," Baldwin told LiveScience.

But though the type of earthquake is different from those that struck Haiti and Chile in recent months, the signature of these quakes looks the same to the instruments that scientists use to measure them.

"Earthquakes all share a common seismic signal," Baldwin said, which consists of a two-phase signal: First, so-called p-waves generated by the earthquake propagate around the world and are detected by seismometers, then come the s-waves. The timing differences are what allow seismologists to pinpoint the locations of earthquakes.

It will take time for the area that ruptured in the China quake to settle down, and several aftershocks have already struck the region, ranging in magnitude from about a 4.8 to a 5.8, Baldwin said. The number and strength of the aftershocks should decrease with time, he added

Quake region part of the ‘Roof of the World’

Mainly Tibetan area saw anti-government riots in 2008

The Chinese Prefecture of Yushu, which was hit by a series of strong earthquakes on Wednesday, has an average altitude of more than 13,000 feet, according to the Xinhua news service, and lies on the Tibetan-Qinghai plateau known as the "Roof of the World."

Its population is more than 250,000, of whom 97 percent are Tibetans, Xinhua stated.

Yushu and its environs are among the Tibetan areas that were caught up in the anti-government protests that swept the region in March 2008.

Tensions have simmered since, and the region has been closed to foreigners off and on. Chinese Central Television (CCTV) reported that soon after the quake, troops secured banks, oil depots and caches of explosives.

Yushu was for centuries home to important Buddhist monasteries and a trading hub and gateway to central Tibet.

In recent years, the government has poured investment into Yushu, opening an airport last year and building a highway to the provincial capital of Xining.

Yushu's gross domestic product was more than 2.5 billion yuan ($367.6 million) in 2009, Xinhua said. Some 21,700 people work as farmers and herders.

Yushu lies in Qinghai Province in China's north-west on the border with the Tibet Autonomous Region.

Qinghai averages more than five earthquakes a year of at least magnitude 5.0, according to the Xinhua. The quakes normally do not cause much damage in the sparsely populated province.

China sifts rubble for quake survivors in Qinghai

Rescuers so far have little equipment to help them

China has been sifting rubble for survivors of the deadly quake which hit the remote Qinghai region as thousands spent a freezing night in the open.

Rescuers used bare hands and picks to search debris as night fell, with little heavy lifting equipment in the mountainous, mainly Tibetan area.

Officials say 589 people died and 10,000 were injured when the quake struck Yushu county early on Wednesday.

But the death toll is expected to rise and further aftershocks are feared.

There was so much dust in the air, we couldn't see anything, Ren Yu Eyewitness in Jiegu

Relief flights carrying medical workers and supplies have been landing in Yushu airport but the road to the town of 70,000 people has been blocked by a landslide, the Associated Press news agency reports from Qinghai's provincial capital, Xining.

The BBC's Chris Hogg, in Qinghai and travelling by road to the disaster area, passed long columns of military vehicles carrying diggers and other heavy lifting equipment as dawn was breaking on Thursday.

The columns, which included ambulances, were about eight or nine hours from the disaster zone, he said.

In the township of Jiegu, 85% of buildings were destroyed, officials say, and state TV has been showing street after street reduced to rubble.

Several schools collapsed and at least 56 students are known to have died, 22 of them in a school in Yushu.

Chinese President Hu Jintao has called for an all-out effort to save as many people as possible and some 5,000 rescuers, including 700 soldiers, have been sent to the disaster area.

The civil affairs ministry said it was to send 5,000 tents, 50,000 coats and 50,000 quilts as local officials in Yushu reported a lack of tents, medicines and medical equipment.

China has received messages of sympathy and offers of aid from foreign states including Japan, Russia and France.

'So much dust'

About 900 people have been pulled alive from under the rubble since the quake struck at 0749 on Wednesday (2349 GMT Tuesday), at the shallow depth of 10km (six miles), Chinese media say.

ut Wu Yong, a local army commander, said the death toll could rise "as lots of houses collapsed".

Rescue operations were being hampered by the fact that the magnitude 6.9 quake disrupted telecommunications, knocked out electricity and triggered landslides.

In Xining, some 860km (530 miles) from the quake zone, soldiers, fire-fighters and rescue workers with sniffer dogs thronged the airport, which closed to civilian flights for several hours to make way for relief planes.

Efforts are being slowed down by the lack of jet fuel stored at Yushu airport. Relief planes are having to carry extra fuel, limiting their space for supplies.

History of deadly earthquakes

'No link' between Chinese quakes

As local officials struggled to find accommodation for the thousands of people left homeless, weather forecasters were predicting wind and sleet in the coming days, putting victims at risk of exposure.

 

Luo Song, a monk from a monastery in Yushu county, said his sister who worked at an orphanage there had told him three children were sent to a hospital but the facilities lacked equipment.

 

"She said the hospitals are facing a lot of difficulty right now because there are no doctors, they have only bandages, they can't give injections, they can't put people on intravenous drips," he told AP by phone from the southern Chinese city of Shenzhen.

 

In Jiegu, hotel manager Ren Yu said that nearly all of the local mud and wood houses had collapsed.

 

 

"There was so much dust in the air, we couldn't see anything," he said.

 

"There was a lot of panic. People were crying on the streets. Some of our staff, who were reunited with their parents, were also in tears."

Harrowing photographs have emerged of emergency workers removing dust-covered dead infants from rubble.

 

The high-altitude region is prone to earthquakes but, according to the US Geological Survey, this was the strongest tremor within 100km of the area since 1976.

 

In 2008, a huge quake struck neighbouring Sichuan province, about 800km from Yushu. That left 87,000 people dead or missing and five million homeless.

 

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