Rescue workers scurried to reach survivors in the bitter cold after an earthquake struck northwest China on Tuesday, resulting in at least 118 fatalities and hundreds of injuries, according to official media.
Late on Monday night, Jishishan county in Gansu Province was shaken by the deadliest earthquake to strike China in almost a decade, causing damage to highways and homes. Residents ran outside, huddling overnight in the freezing winter cold, while rescuers raced to look for survivors trapped under rubble.
According to provincial officials during a press briefing on Tuesday morning, the earthquake in Gansu has damaged over 4,700 homes, killed 105 people, and injured 397 more as of this morning.
As of noon, local officials in the neighboring province of Qinghai reported that 13 people had died, 182 had been injured, and 20 more were still missing.
Just before midnight, many people would have been asleep in their houses when the earthquake occurred. The United States Geological Survey reports that at the shallow depth of slightly over 6 miles, it measured 5.9 magnitude. The magnitude was reported as 6.2 by the China Earthquake Networks Center (CENC), which is a little higher.
The epicenter lies in the mountainous region on the eastern edge of the Tibetan plateau, which separates Gansu from Qinghai. According to the CENC, as of this morning, there had been nine aftershocks of magnitude 3 or higher following the initial earthquake.
According to CCTV, the first tremors lasted about 20 seconds and were felt as far away as 102 kilometers (63 miles) in Lanzhou, the provincial capital.
On the social media platform Weibo, university students in Lanzhou posted pictures of people congregating outside their residence halls.
When the earthquake struck, a Lanzhou University student said she and her roommates first tried to shelter in the restroom before frantically rushing down 12 stories during the intense shaking.
She said, “I’ve never felt such strong tremors,” in a Weibo post. “I’m shivering with everyone outside in my down jacket, long underwear, and slippers, as the temperature is below -10 degrees Celsius.”
CCTV footage showed rescuers excavating survivors from the debris in the dark after several village homes in Gansu and Qinghai fell.
Rescue attempts have been made more difficult in certain places by the disruption of mobile signals, electricity and water supplies caused by the earthquake.
According to a province official, thousands of tents, folding beds, comforters, and portable fire pits have been sent to the disaster area in Gansu, along with at least 4,000 firefighters, police officers, and soldiers.
Many people in the 260,000-person county of Jishishan, which is the epicenter, fled their houses in panic and sought shelter in public spaces. Families are seen cuddling up and wearing heavy blankets in pictures and videos posted on social media and by state media on a public square.
A Jishishan villager claimed that she hurried past broken glass and bricks while running barefoot since she didn’t have time to put on additional clothing.
“There was a loud boom, and the second-floor wall fell in.” The villager told Jiupai News, a news website connected to the state-run Changjiang Daily, “(I was) nearly hit and trapped inside.”
In the hard-hit town of Dahejia in Jishishan county, authorities have set up tents at a temporary relocation site in a square, according to CCTV.
CCTV reports that the lowest temperature recorded overnight in Jishishan was -14 degrees Celsius, or 6.8 degrees Fahrenheit.
Wang Duo, one of the rescue’s experts, told China Newsweek, the state-run publication, that the “biggest challenge” to the attempts is the below-freezing weather. Generally speaking, the first 72 hours are the “golden period” for rescue; but, in this instance, the extreme cold reduces this crucial window of time.
A severe cold wave has grabbed large parts of China, notably its northwest, in recent days, causing temperatures in certain northern locations to drop to almost historic lows.
Chinese President Xi Jinping on Tuesday asked officials to “make all-out efforts” to find survivors and tend to the injured, pointing out that the accident happened in a chilly, high-altitude location, according to Xinhua.
The two earthquake-affected provinces received 200 million yuan ($28 million) in natural disaster relief funding from China’s Finance Ministry and Emergency Management Ministry, according to Xinhua.
Strong earthquakes are common in China, particularly in the southwest where the Indian and Eurasian tectonic plates collide dramatically to form the majestic Himalayas and the large Tibetan plateau.
Publicly available reports state that this earthquake is the deadliest to have struck China in almost ten years, since an earthquake in 2014 that struck the southwestern province of Yunnan killed almost 600 people.
In 2008, a severe magnitude 7.9 earthquake struck Sichuan, a province next to Yunnan, killing almost 90,000 people.
