Thread: Western Chinese province struck by 6.9 earthquake

Western Chinese province struck by 6.9 earthquake
1 hr 8 mins ago

BEIJING – A series of strong earthquakes struck China's western Qinghai province Wednesday, the U.S. Geological Survey said. There were no immediate reports of casualties in the remote rural area, though witnesses described houses quickly crumbling.

The USGS reported on its Web site that a magnitude 6.9 temblor struck an area in southern Qinghai, near Tibet, on Wednesday morning and was followed by two quakes in the same region.

The quake hit the county of Yushu, a Tibetan area in Qinghai, the official Xinhua News Agency cited the China Earthquake Networks Center as saying. The Chinese center measured the quake's magnitude at 7.1. A local government Web site put the county's population in 2005 at 89,300, a community of mostly herders and farmers.

The quake sent residents fleeing as it toppled many houses made of mud and wood, said Gasong Nima, the Yushu county television station's deputy head of news, speaking by phone with state broadcaster CCTV.

"In a flash, the houses went down. It was a terrible earthquake," the witness said. "In a small park, there is a Buddhist tower and the top of the tower fell off.

"Everybody is out on the streets, standing in front of their houses, trying to find their family members," he said, adding that school buildings had not collapsed but students had been evacuated and were assembled in outdoor playgrounds.

The epicenter of the first quake was located 235 miles (380 kilometers) south-southeast of Golmud, a large city in Qinghai, at a depth of six miles (10 kilometers), the USGS said.

Ten minutes later, the area was hit by a magnitude 5.3 quake, which was followed after two minutes by a temblor measuring 5.2, according to the U.S. agency. Both the subsequent earthquakes were measured at a depth of 6 miles (10 kilometers).

Calls to the local Communist Party office and the government of Yushu county and the Qinghai provincial seismological bureau rang unanswered.

In 2008, a magnitude-7.9 quake in Sichuan province left almost 90,000 people dead or missing.

On the Net: U.S. Geological Survey: http://www.usgs.gov/

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Quake in western China kills 400, buries more
By Gillian Wong, Associated Press Writer 14 mins ago

BEIJING – Soldiers and civilians used shovels and their bare hands to dig through collapsed buildings in search of survivors after strong earthquakes struck a mountainous Tibetan region of China on Wednesday, killing at least 400 people and injuring more than 10,000.

The series of quakes flattened buildings across remote western Yushu county and sent survivors, many bleeding from their wounds, flooding into the streets of Jiegu township. State television showed block after devastated block of toppled mud and wood homes. Local officials said 85 percent of the structures had been destroyed.

Residents and troops garrisoned in the town used shovels and their hands to pull survivors and bodies from the rubble much of the day. Several schools collapsed, with the state news agency saying at least 56 students died. Worst hit was the Yushu Vocational School, where Xinhua cited a local education official as saying 22 students died.

Footage on Qinghai Satellite TV showed bodies wrapped in blankets lying on the ground while rescuers pulled shards of concrete from a pancaked school building.

Crews set up emergency generators to restore operations at Yushu's airport, and by late afternoon the first of six flights landed carrying rescue workers and equipment. But the road to town was blocked by a landslide, hampering the rescue as temperatures dropped below freezing. Tens of thousands of the town's 70,000 people were without shelter, state media said.

"The situation here is difficult. Most of the buildings have collapsed. A lot of people are seriously injured," said Pu Wu, a director of the Jinba Project, which provides health care training for Tibetan communities. "We are scared. We are all camping outside and waiting for more tents to come."

While China's military is well-practiced in responding to disasters, the remote location posed logistical difficulties. The area sits at around 13,000 feet (4,000 meters) and is poor. Most people live in Jiegu, with the remaining — mostly herders — scattered across the broad valleys. The small airport has no refueling supplies, so relief flights were carrying extra jet fuel, reducing their capacity for hauling supplies, state media reported.

A local official quoted on state TV put the death toll at 400 and the injured at 10,000 by late afternoon. Wu Yong, commander of the army garrison, said the deaths "may rise further as lots of houses collapsed." Hospitals were overwhelmed, and rescue teams were slowed by damaged roads, strong winds and frequent aftershocks.

Luo Song, a monk from a monastery in Yushu county, said his sister who worked at an orphanage 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," the monk said by phone while on a visit to the southern Chinese city of Shenzhen. China's rural hospitals typically are not well equipped.

Workers released water from a nearby reservoir whose dam was cracked by the quake, according to the China Earthquake Administration.

President Hu Jintao and Premier Wen Jiabao urged "all-out efforts" to rescue survivors and dispatched a vice-premier to supervise the effort. The government immediately allocated $30 million (200 million yuan) for relief, and mobilized more than 5,000 soldiers, medical workers and other rescuers, joining 700 troops already on the ground.

With many people forced outside, the provincial government said it was rushing 5,000 tents and 100,000 coats and blankets to the region, where average daily temperatures were around 43 degrees Fahrenheit (6 degrees Celsius).

The initial quake, measured at magnitude-6.9 by the U.S. Geological Survey and 7.1 by the China Earthquake Networks Center, hit Yushu at 7:49 a.m. (7:49 p.m. EDT, 2349 GMT). It was followed by five more tremors within three hours, all but one registering 5.0 or higher.

Residents of Jiegu, known by Tibetans as Gyegu, about 20 miles (30 kilometers) from the epicenter, fled dazed and sobbing as the ground shook, toppling houses, as well as temples, gas stations, electric poles and the top of a Buddhist pagoda in a park, witnesses and state media 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. "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. After transporting guests to safety, hotel staff 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, adding other survivors were put in tents in the hotel yard while they awaited assistance.

Many of the students boarded at the schools and were preparing to head to class when the quake struck. One rescue worker said he didn't know how many students had died but he had helped recover several bodies.

"Students just got up and were yet to go to class when the quake happened. I recovered several bodies from the debris and found they were fully dressed," said Zhu Liang, a government worker who joined the rescue operation.

The destruction of schools is an eerie echo of the massive magnitude-7.9 quake that hit neighboring Sichuan province two years ago, leaving nearly 90,000 people dead or missing. Thousands of students among the dead were killed when their schools collapsed. Poor design, shoddy construction and the lax enforcement of building codes were found to be rampant.

Both Wednesday's quake and the one in Sichuan two years ago occurred along the Longmenshan fault, which runs underneath the mountains that divide the Tibetan plateau to the west and the Sichuan plain below.

Messages of sympathy came from the pope at the Vatican, U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, as well as the Dalai Lama, the exiled Tibetan leader revered by the often fervently Buddhist Tibetans and reviled by Chinese leaders, who accuse him of fomenting separatism.

Once a trading hub and a gateway to central Tibet, Yushu and surrounding 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.

The garrison of troops who were the first to respond to the quake is stationed in the area to help maintain order. CCTV reported that soon after the quake, troops secured banks, oil depots and caches of explosives.

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Death toll in China earthquake jumps to 1,144
39 mins ago

JIEGU, China – State media says the death toll from Wednesday's earthquake in western China has risen to 1,144.

The Xinhua News Agency says the new death toll is as of early Friday evening — up from 791 reported Friday afternoon.

The report says another 417 people remain missing.

THIS IS A BREAKING NEWS UPDATE. Check back soon for further information. AP's earlier story is below.

JIEGU, China (AP) — Tibetan monks prayed over hundreds of bodies Friday at a makeshift morgue next to their monastery after powerful earthquakes destroyed the remote mountain town of Jiegu in western China and left at least 791 people dead.

The official toll was likely to climb further. Gerlai Tenzing, a red-robed monk from the Jiegu Monastery, estimated that about 1,000 bodies had been brought to a hillside clearing in the shadow of the monastery. He said a precise count was difficult because bodies continued to trickle in and some had already been taken away by family members.

Dozens of monks began singing chants, or sutras, late in the afternoon and planned to begin cremating the unclaimed bodies Saturday. Genqiu, a 22-year-old monk, said it was impossible to perform traditional sky burials for all. Tibetan sky burials involve chopping a body into pieces and leaving it on a platform to be devoured by vultures.

"The vultures can't eat them all," said Genqiu, who like many Tibetans goes by one name.

Relief workers estimate that 70 percent to 90 percent of the town's wood-and-mud houses collapsed when the earthquakes hit Yushu county Wednesday morning.

China Central Television reported that a 13-year-old Tibetan girl was pulled from the toppled two-story Minzu Hotel on Friday after a sniffer dog alerted rescuers to her location. The girl, identified as Changli Maomu, was freed after a crane lifted a large concrete block out of the rubble, it said. Her condition was good and she was taken to a medical station for treatment, it said.

The official Xinhua News Agency said a 43-year-old Tibetan woman, Jang La, was also rescued after being trapped for 50 hours with no food or water.

"I thought no one would manage to save us and I lost hope, but as I yelled and yelled for help, they came and rescued us," Xinhua quoted her as saying. The woman's hips were crushed but she was stable, it said.

Xinhua reported Friday afternoon the confirmed death toll had risen to 791, with 294 missing. The report said 11,477 people were injured, 1,174 severely. The strongest of the quakes Wednesday was measured at magnitude 6.9 by the U.S. Geological Survey and 7.1 by China's earthquake administration.

Many survivors shivered through a second night outdoors as they waited for tents to arrive. Hundreds gathered on a plaza around a 50-foot (15-meter) tall statue of the mythical Tibetan King Gesar, wrapped in blankets taken from shattered homes.

Police had to intervene Friday to prevent young men from grabbing tents out of the back of a truck.

"I saw trucks almost attacked by local people because of the lack of food and shelter," said Pierre Deve, a program director at the Yushu-based community development organization Snowland Service Group. "It started yesterday, but you still see some things like this today. It's getting better. Chinese authorities are doing well."

Nonetheless, Deve said his group, which plans to distribute food, medicine, tents, clothes and bedding, was moving out of Jiegu in case things got worse.

"We want to have a place out of the city where we can communicate in a good way, protect the things we need to give to people who need them," he said.

China Central Television reported that about 40,000 tents would be in place by Saturday, enough to accommodate all survivors. Also on the way was more equipment to help probe for signs of life under the debris, it said. The tools include small cameras and microphones attached to poles that can be snaked into crevices as well as heat and motion sensors.

At one collapsed building where people were believed trapped, about 70 civilians, including three dozen Tibetan monks in crimson robes, joined rescue workers.

"One, two, three," the monks chanted as they used wooden beams to try to push away a section of collapsed wall. They later tied ropes to a slab of concrete and dragged it away.

The effort was hampered by the area's altitude, about 13,000 feet (4,000 meters), and Xinhua reported two dozen trained rescuers had to stop working because of altitude sickness. Sniffer dogs were also affected, it said.

Xinhua quoted a local education official as saying 66 children and 10 teachers had died, mostly in three schools, but more remained missing.

Thousands of students died during a massive Sichuan quake in 2008 when their poorly built schools collapsed. But unlike in Sichuan — where schools toppled as other buildings stood — nearly everything fell over in Yushu.

To underline official concern for a Tibetan area that saw anti-government protests two years ago, Premier Wen Jiabao arrived in Yushu county Thursday evening to meet survivors. President Hu Jintao, in Brazil after visiting Washington, canceled scheduled stops in Venezuela and Peru to come home.

Wen, the sympathetic, grandfatherly face of the usually distant Chinese leadership, sought to provide comfort and build trust with the mostly Tibetan victims of the quake.

"The disaster you suffered is our disaster. Your suffering is our suffering. Your loss of loved ones is our loss. We mourn as you do. It breaks our hearts," Wen said in remarks repeatedly broadcast on state TV.

Wen also repeated nearly word for word the promise he made during the Sichuan earthquake: "As long as there's a glimmer of hope, we will spare no effort and never give up."


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China mourns 2,064 victims in devastating quake
By Tini Tran, Associated Press Writer 4 mins ago

BEIJING – Bowing their heads in silent tribute, thousands of officials, soldiers and civilians gathered Wednesday in ceremonies across China to mourn the 2,064 victims killed in a devastating quake that hit one week ago in a remote Tibetan region.

At the quake's epicenter in Yushu County in western Qinghai province, hundreds of rescue workers, residents and children in school uniforms stood silently for a ceremony held on a hill with rubble from destroyed buildings behind them. The solemn gathering was aired live on television.

Red Chinese flags flew at half-staff as the blaring of horns and sirens from cars, police vehicles and ambulances sounded in the background after three minutes of silence that began at 10 a.m.

Dressed in black with a white flower pinned to his chest, Qiang Wei, Communist Party secretary for Qinghai province, called on people to unite and rebuild in the wake of the quake, which also left more than 12,000 people injured.

"Today, we are gathered here to pay our tribute and send our condolences.... The earthquake showed no mercy, but we have love. Let us wipe our tears off ... and strive to meet a brighter tomorrow and let a more beautiful, wealthy and socialist Yushu stand on the vast Tibetan Plateau," he said.

Light snow fell in Xining, Qinghai's capital, as tens of thousands gathered in the town's main square for formal ceremonies. Police, government officials, military troops and regular citizens lined up to lay white flowers on tables laden with bouquets.

In Beijing, President Hu Jintao, along with China's top leaders, paid a silent tribute in Tiananmen Square to the victims of the earthquake.

A charity show Tuesday night, broadcast nationwide by China Central Television, raised 2.175 billion yuan ($319 million) for the quake-hit region, with donations mainly coming from the country's private and state-owned enterprises, entertainers, dignitaries, and news organizations.

China ordered all flags be flown at half-staff and called a halt to all entertainment, including online games and sports events, for the national day of mourning.

Similar arrangements were made two years ago following a larger and deadlier earthquake in southern Sichuan province that left nearly 90,000 dead or missing. Such high-profile displays of government concern are also likely aimed at tamping any potential unrest among the mostly Tibetan victims.

Tibetan anger over political and religious restrictions and perceived economic exploitation by the ethnic majority Han Chinese have sometimes erupted in violence.

The Chinese government has poured in aid to Tibet and surrounding regions, such as Qinghai, where residents have frequently chafed under Chinese rule.

The Voice of Tibet radio service, based is Oslo, Norway, said Chinese authorities have jammed broadcasts of recorded messages from Tibetans in exile to family and friends living in the quake region.

"We want basically to give a platform for Tibetans and other sympathizers to convey their messages to the victims of the earthquake, rescue workers and aid agencies," Voice of Tibet editor-in-chief Karma Yeshi said in a statement.

Oystein Alme, a spokesman for the service, told The Associated Press that Chinese authorities have blocked the broadcasts since the service began transmitting them Monday.

Alme said the service urged the Beijing government not to block Wednesday's transmission, saying the messages would be broadcast separately from the service's politically oriented programming.

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