A powerful overnight earthquake shook a mountainous region in northwestern China, causing widespread destruction, displacing residents into the freezing winter night, and resulting in 127 fatalities—the nation’s deadliest quake in nine years, authorities reported on Tuesday.
The quake, measuring magnitude 6.2, struck just before midnight on Monday, causing injuries to over 700 people, damaging infrastructure, and disrupting power and communication lines in Gansu and Qinghai provinces, as indicated by officials and Chinese media reports.
Emergency responders conducted search and rescue operations amidst collapsed buildings and at least one landslide.
Displaced individuals, who lost their homes, braced for a cold winter night in tents set up at hastily arranged evacuation sites, the Associated Press reported.
The earthquake’s epicenter was in Gansu’s Jishishan county, at a relatively shallow depth of 10 kilometers (6 miles), approximately 5 kilometers (3 miles) from the provincial boundary with Qinghai, according to the China Earthquake Networks Center.
The U.S. Geological Survey reported a magnitude of 5.9.
State broadcaster CCTV reported 113 confirmed deaths and 536 injuries in Gansu, while in Qinghai, an area north of the epicenter, the People’s Daily, the Communist Party’s official mouthpiece, stated 14 fatalities and 198 injuries.
Written by B.C. Begley
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B.C. Begley 