Rescue crews raced to reach survivors in below-freezing temperatures on Tuesday as an earthquake struck northwest China, leaving at least 116 dead and hundreds more injured, according to state media.
Late on Monday night, an earthquake in Gansu Province’s Jishishan County caused damage to roads and homes. Residents rushed outside, huddling overnight in the bitter winter cold, while rescuers raced to look for survivors trapped under rubble.
According to provincial authorities during a press conference on Tuesday morning, the earthquake in Gansu has caused damage to over 4,700 houses and killed 105 people.
According to officials, 397 persons in Gansu have been hurt so far, 16 of them critically and 76 of them seriously.
According to CCTV, eleven people have passed away in Qinghai, a nearby province.
Just before midnight, many people would have been asleep in their homes when the earthquake struck. The United States Geological Survey reports that at the shallow depth of slightly over 6 miles, it measured 5.9 magnitude. With a magnitude of 6.2, the China Earthquake Administration provided a slightly higher estimate.
According to CCTV, the tremors lasted for almost 20 seconds and were felt as far away as 102 kilometres (63 miles) in Lanzhou, the provincial capital.
CCTV footage showed firefighters in Qinghai and Gansu pulling survivors from the debris after some village homes collapsed. There are currently over 1,600 firefighters on duty.
Rescue efforts have been made more difficult in certain areas by the disruption of mobile signals, electricity and water supplies caused by the earthquake.
sour weather
Strong tremors woke up the people of Jishishan. Many hastily fled their houses in search of cover in public spaces. Families are seen huddled up and covered in thick blankets in pictures and videos that appear on state media in a public square.
In the hard-hit town of Dahejia in Jishishan county, authorities have set up tents at a temporary resettlement site on 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 outlet, that the “biggest challenge” to the efforts is the below-freezing weather. The “golden period” for rescue is typically the first 72 hours, but Wang noted that the extreme cold in this instance has reduced that crucial window of time.
A sudden cold snap has gripped large parts of China, including its northwest, in recent days, causing temperatures in some northern areas to drop to almost historic lows.
Chinese President Xi Jinping on Tuesday urged officials to “make all-out efforts” to find survivors and tend to the injured, pointing out that the accident happened in a cold, high-altitude location, according to Xinhua.
Strong earthquakes frequently occur in China, particularly in the southwest where the Indian and Eurasian tectonic plates collide to form the vast Tibetan plateau and the towering Himalayas.
With an earthquake in 2014 that killed about 600 people in the southwestern province of Yunnan, the current earthquake is expected to be the deadliest to strike China in almost ten years.
In 2008, a devastating magnitude 7.9 earthquake struck Sichuan, a province adjacent to Yunnan, killing about 90,000 people.
