Quakes in southwest China kill 64

BEIJING: Two shallow 5.6 magnitude earthquakes hit mountainous southwestern China yesterday, killing at least 64 people and forcing tens of thousands of people from damaged buildings, state media said. The quakes struck near the border of Yunnan and Guizhou provinces, the first one at 11:19 am (0319 GMT) and the second one about 45 minutes later, the US Geological Survey said. About 700 people were injured and 20,000 homes damaged in the remote mountainous region about 350 km from the Yunnan provincial capital Kunming, the official Xinhua news agency said.

As the number of dead climbed throughout the day, state media reported that Premier Wen Jiabao would travel to the area, as he has often done when disasters strike Chinese regions. President Hu Jintao called for disaster relief to be dispatched to the area while attending the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum in the Russian city of Vladivostok. Most of the victims were from Yiliang county in Yunnan, near the epicentre of the quakes, which struck at a depth of about 9 km according to the USGS.

By mid-afternoon, authorities had moved more than 100,000 from the area as a series of more than 60 aftershocks struck. No deaths were reported in Guizhou province. Calls to police stations and hospitals in Yiliang went unanswered, but a worker at No. 2 Renmin Hospital in Zhaotong city said medical staff were busy treating the injured. “We have admitted injured people, but don’t have an overall number yet, and we can’t comment without government approval,” he told Reuters.

Buildings in China’s less developed regions are often thrown up with little regard for construction standards, making them susceptible to earthquakes. Footage from state broadcaster CCTV showed boulder-covered roadways, abandoned cars and black smoke pouring from buildings. “The hardest part of the rescue now is traffic. Roads are blocked and rescuers have to climb the mountains to reach hard-hit villages,” Xinhua quoted Li Fuchun, an official from Luozehe, the town at the epicentre of the quake, as saying. The death toll may rise as rescuers reach villages cut off by landslides, the news agency said. Rocks as tall as four meters crashed into mountain roads and landslides were also triggered.

Many people took cover outside after the first quake and did not return indoors, said a man surnamed Xia reached by phone. “Lots of people are outside because they fear aftershocks,” he said. “I was walking on the street when I suddenly felt the ground shaking beneath me,” posted one witness on Sina Weibo, a microblog similar to Twitter. “People started rushing outside screaming, it still scares me to think of it now.”

Many structures in the area are built with mud and timber, making them more prone to collapse, the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies said. “On the other hand, extricating people trapped in these structures may be easier than from under concrete/brick homes, meaning that there could be many more injuries proportionate to the number of deaths,” it said. – Agencies

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