Rescuers sit on the ruins of a house in Longmen township, an area close to the epicentre of a strong earthquake that hit the city of Ya'an in southwest China's Sichuan province yesterday.
LUSHAN: At least 160 people were killed and 6,700 injured when a strong earthquake hit a mountainous part of southwestern China yesterday, destroying thousands of homes and triggering landslides.
The shallow earthquake struck Sichuan province on the edge of the Tibetan Plateau just after 8am, prompting a major rescue operation in the same area where 87,000 people were reported dead or missing in a quake in 2008.
Eighteen hours after the quake hit Lushan county in the city of Ya’an, the death toll stood at 160, the official Xinhua news agency reported, citing the China Earthquake Administration, which said more than 6,700 people had been injured.
At least 10,000 homes were destroyed, the Sichuan government said, as rescue workers searched through the rubble for survivors.
Local seismologists registered the quake at magnitude 7.0 while the US Geological Survey gave it as 6.6. More than 840 aftershocks followed, Xinhua said.
The China Meteorological Association warned of the possibility of landslides in Lushan county yesterday and today.
The quake was felt in the provincial capital Chengdu, which lies to the east, and even in the megacity of Chongqing several hundred kilometres away.
Panicked residents fled into the streets, some of them still in their slippers and pyjamas.
“Members of my family were woken up. They were lying in bed when the strong shaking began and the wardrobes began shaking strongly,” said a 43-year-old Chongqing resident surnamed Wang. “We grabbed our clothes and ran outside.”
Xia Donghai, 48, a migrant worker in the northern province of Heibei rushed home to Lushan, when his family failed to respond to telephone calls.
“I am filled with terror, I do not know what I will find when I return to the family home,” he said.
At Lushan People’s Hospital, a steady stream of ambulances continued to arrive in the early hours today. Most victims were taken to tents erected in the grounds surrounding the hospital, where doctors treated the wounded.
More than 17,000 soldiers and police had joined the rescue mission and five drones were sent to capture aerial images, Xinhua said, as well as aircraft carrying out rescue and relief work.
Some teams had to contend with roads blocked by debris, state television CCTV reported, while one military vehicle carrying 17 troops plummeted over a cliff, killing one soldier and injuring seven others, Xinhua said.
Rescue teams continued working as night fell, using audio, video and radar equipment as well as sniffer dogs to search for survivors, Xinhua reported.
Firefighters had pulled 91 people alive from the rubble, the news agency said, citing the Ministry of Public Security.
The disaster evoked comparisons to the 2008 Sichuan quake, the country’s worst in decades, and President Xi Jinping ordered all-out efforts to minimise casualties, Xinhua said.
Premier Li Keqiang arrived in Sichuan in the afternoon and took a helicopter to the quake zone. The first 24 hours was “the golden time for saving lives”, he was quoted as saying.
Amid the rescue efforts, a 30-year-old pregnant woman surnamed Zhao was pulled out of the rubble along with a young child and sent to hospital for treatment, the People’s Daily said on its Weibo account.
A local TV journalist due to get married yesterday instead turned up for work and a photograph of her holding a microphone in her wedding dress with bright makeup and a corsage was widely circulated online.
Condolences have been flooding in for victims of the quake. Nigerian President Goodluck Jonathan conveyed the “solidarity and sincere sympathy of Nigeria”, while European Commission President José Manuel Barroso said his “thoughts and feelings are with everyone who has been affected”.
Sichuan is one of the four major natural gas-producing provinces in China, and its output accounts for about 14 percent of the nation’s total.
Sinopec Group, Asia’s largest oil refiner, said its huge Puguang gas field was unaffected.
Earthquakes frequently strike the country’s southwest. In April 2010, a 6.9 magnitude quake killed about 2,700 people and injured 12,000 in a remote area of Qinghai province bordering the northwest of Sichuan.
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