Earthquake kills more than 100 people in rural China and homes collapse

A magnitude 6.2 earthquake hit one of China’s poorest regions just before midnight Monday, killing at least 126 people, injuring hundreds and collapsing mud houses in remote villages.

Chinese state media arriving in Dahe village, one of the worst-hit areas in northwest China’s Gansu province, stressed that many houses were at risk of collapsing or had already collapsed, especially houses built with earth and clay.

“I have been living for more than 80 years and I have never seen such a big earthquake,” an elderly man said as he was carried away from his damaged home.

More than 155,000 homes in Gansu were damaged or destroyed.

On Monday, at 11.59pm (12.59pm in Brasilia), the earthquake shook Jishishan county, Gansu, at a depth of 10km. The epicenter was located 5 kilometers from the provincial border between Gansu and Qinghai, where strong tremors were also felt.

Authorities mobilized a series of emergency responses after the earthquake destroyed roads and infrastructure, triggered landslides and buried half a village in silt. But the rescue work proved challenging in sub-zero temperatures after a severe cold wave hit the country.

Earthquakes are common in provinces such as Gansu, located on the northeastern edge of the tectonically active Qinghai-Tibetan Plateau. China’s deadliest earthquake in decades occurred in 2008, when a magnitude 8.0 earthquake struck Sichuan, killing nearly 70,000 people.

In Gansu, as of 1pm on Tuesday (2am in Brasilia), 113 people had died and 536 were injured, according to the authorities.

The death toll in Qinghai has risen to at least 13, with 182 injured.

Officially, 20 people are missing.

About 2,200 people from the Gansu province fire brigade and 900 from the forestry brigade, as well as 260 emergency rescue personnel, were sent to the disaster zone, Xinhua news agency reported, adding that they were also deployed hundreds of soldiers and police. envoy.

Source: Terra

Rose

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