Strong quake hits China, 102 dead, more than 2,200 injured

[MortalKombat]

Strong quake hits China, 102 dead, more than 2,200 injured

A view of a collapsed building with a sign reading, "Lushan Kindergarden" after a 6.6 magnitude earthquake hit southwestern China's Sichuan province is seen in this April 20, 2013 still image taken from TV. REUTERS/China Central Television (CCTV) via REUTERS TV

By Ben Blanchard
BEIJING | Sat Apr 20, 2013 5:01am EDT

(Reuters) - A strong 6.6 magnitude earthquake hit a remote, mostly rural and mountainous area of southwestern China's Sichuan province on Saturday, killing at least 102 people and injuring about 2,200 close to where a big quake killed almost 70,000 people in 2008.

The earthquake occurred at 8.02 a.m. (0002 GMT) in Lushan county near Ya'an city and the epicenter had a depth of 12 km (7.5 miles), the U.S. Geological Survey said.

The quake was felt by residents in neighboring provinces and in the provincial capital of Chengdu, causing many people to rush out of buildings, according to accounts on China's Twitter-like Sina Weibo microblogging service.

State television said 102 people had been confirmed dead with more than 2,200 injured, 147 of them seriously.

President Xi Jinping and Premier Li Keqiang said all efforts must be put into rescuing victims to limit the death toll.

Li arrived in Chengdu and was on his way to the disaster zone by helicopter, state media said.

"The current most urgent issue is grasping the first 24 hours since the quake's occurrence, the golden time for saving lives," Xinhua news agency quoted Li as saying.

Xinhua said 6,000 troops were heading to the area to help with rescue efforts. State television CCTV said only emergency vehicles were being allowed into Ya'an, though Chengdu airport had reopened.

Most of the deaths were concentrated in Lushan, where water and electricity were cut off. Pictures on Chinese news sites showed toppled buildings and people in bloodied bandages being treated in tents outside the hospital, which appeared only lightly damaged.

Rescuers in Lushan had pulled 32 survivors out of rubble, Xinhua said. In villages closest to the epicenter, almost all low rise houses and buildings had collapsed, according to footage broadcast on state television.

"We are very busy right now, there are about eight or nine injured people, the doctors are handling the cases," said a doctor at a Ya'an hospital who gave her family name as Liu.

The hospital was seeing head and leg injuries, she added.

"SHAKES AND TREMORS"

A resident in Chengdu, 140 km (85 miles) from Ya'an city, told Xinhua he was on the 13th floor of a building when he felt the quake. The building shook for about 20 seconds and he saw tiles fall from nearby buildings.

Ya'an is a city of 1.5 million people and is considered one of the birthplaces of Chinese tea culture. It is also the home to one of China's main centers for protecting the giant panda.

"There are still shakes and tremors and our area is safe. The pandas are safe," said a spokesman with Ya'an's Bifengxia nature park, a tourism park that houses more than 100 pandas.

Shouts and screams were heard in the background while Reuters was on the telephone with the spokesman.

"There was just an aftershock, an aftershock, our office is safe," he said.

Numerous aftershocks jolted the area, the largest of which was magnitude 5.1.

Sichuan is one of the four major natural-gas-producing provinces in China, and its output accounts for about 14 percent of the nation's total.

Sinopec Group, Asia's largest oil refiner, said its huge Puguang gas field was unaffected.

The U.S. Geological Survey initially put the magnitude at 7, but later revised it down.

The devastating May 2008 quake was 7.9 magnitude.

(Additional reporting by Melanie Lee and Lu Jianxin in SHANGHAI; Editing by Jonathan Standing and Sanjeev Miglani)

 

[MortalKombat]

A view of cracks on a wall after a 6.6 magnitude earthquake hit southwestern China's Sichuan province is seen in this April 20, 2013 still image taken from TV.
REUTERS/China Central Television (CCTV) via REUTERS TV

​

 

[Inahime]

China earthquake leaves at least 156 people dead

From ASSOCIATED PRESS
Last Updated: 12:52 PM, April 20, 2013
Posted: 12:04 AM, April 20, 2013

A rescuer carries a child to safety after she was pulled out of her collapsed home after an earthquake hit China's Sichuan province today.

YA'AN, China — Residents huddled outdoors Saturday night in a town near the epicenter of a powerful earthquake that struck the steep hills of China's southwestern Sichuan province, leaving at least 156 people dead and more than 5,500 injured.

Saturday morning's earthquake triggered landslides and disrupted phone and power connections in mountainous Lushan county five years after a devastating quake wreaked widespread damage across the region. The village of Longmen was hit particularly hard, with authorities saying nearly all the buildings there had been destroyed in a frightening minute-long shaking by the quake.

In nearby Ya'an town, where aftershocks could be felt nearly 20 hours after the quake, residents sat in groups outside convenience stores watching the news on television sets. Fourteen-year-old Wang Xing sat with her family on chairs by the roadside in the cool night air, a large blanket on her lap.

Wang and her relatives said they planned to spend the night in their cars. "We don't feel safe sleeping at home tonight," said Wang, a student. She said the quake left tears on the walls of her family's house. "It was very scary when it happened. I ran out of my bed and out of the house. I didn't even have my shoes on."

Along the main roads leading to the worst-hit county of Lushan, ambulances, fire engines and military trucks piled high with supplies waited in long lines, some turning back to try other routes when roads were impassable.

Rescuers turned the square outside the Lushan County Hospital into a triage center, where medical personnel bandaged bleeding victims, according to footage on China Central Television. Rescuers dynamited boulders that had fallen across roads to reach Longmen and other damaged areas lying farther up the mountain valleys, state media reported.

The China Earthquake Administration said at least 156 people had died, including 96 in Lushan. In the jurisdiction of Ya'an, which administers Lushan, 19 people were reported missing and more than 5,500 people were injured, the administration said.

The quake — measured by the earthquake administration at magnitude-7.0 and by the U.S. Geological Survey at 6.6 — struck the steep hills of Lushan county shortly after 8 a.m., when many people were at home, sleeping or having breakfast. People in their underwear and wrapped in blankets ran into the streets of Ya'an and even the provincial capital of Chengdu, 115 kilometers (70 miles) east of Lushan, according to photos, video and accounts posted online.

The quake's shallow depth, less than 13 kilometers (8 miles), likely magnified the impact.

Chengdu's airport shut down for about an hour before reopening, though many flights were canceled or delayed, and its railway station halted dozens of scheduled trains, state media said.

Lushan reported the most deaths, but there was concern that casualties in neighboring Baoxing county might have been under-reported because of inaccessibility after roads were blocked and power and phone services cut off.

As the region went into the first night after the quake, rain started to fall, slowing rescue work. Forecasts called for more rain in the next several days, and the China Meteorological Administration warned of possible landslides and other geological disasters.

Tens of thousands of people moved into tents or cars, unable to return home or too afraid to go back as aftershocks continued to jolt the region.

Lushan, where the quake struck, lies where the fertile Sichuan plain meets foothills that eventually rise to the Tibetan plateau and sits atop the Longmenshan fault. It was along that fault line that a devastating magnitude-7.9 quake struck on May 12, 2008, leaving more than 90,000 people dead or missing and presumed dead in one of the worst natural disasters to strike China in recent decades.

"It was just like May 12," Liu Xi, a writer in Ya'an city, who was jolted awake by Saturday's quake, said via a private message on his account on Sina Corporation's Twitter-like Weibo service. "All the home decorations fell at once, and the old house cracked."

The official Xinhua News Agency said the well-known Bifengxia panda preserve, which is near Lushan, was not affected by the quake. Dozens of pandas were moved to Bifengxia from another preserve, Wolong, after its habitat was wrecked by the 2008 quake.

As in most natural disasters, the government mobilized thousands of soldiers and others — 7,000 people by Saturday afternoon — sending excavators and other heavy machinery as well as tents, blankets and other emergency supplies. Two soldiers died after the vehicle that they and more than a dozen others were in slipped off the road and rolled down a cliff, state media reported.

Premier Li Keqiang flew to Ya'an to direct rescue efforts, and he and President Xi Jinping ordered officials and rescuers to make saving people the top priority, Xinhua said.

The Chinese Red Cross said it had deployed relief teams with supplies of food, water, medicine and rescue equipment to the disaster areas.

With roads blocked for several hours after the quake, the military surveyed the disaster area by air. Aerial photos released by the military and shown on state television showed individual houses in ruins in Lushan and outlying villages flattened into rubble. The roofs of some taller buildings appeared to have slipped off, exposing the floors beneath them.

A person whose posts to the micro-blogging account "Qingyi Riverside" on Weibo carried a locator geotag for Lushan said many buildings collapsed and that people could spot helicopters hovering above.

The earthquake administration said there had been at least 712 aftershocks, including two of magnitude-5.0 or higher.

"It's too dangerous," said a person with the Weibo account Chengduxinglin and with a Lushan geotag. "Even the aftershocks are scary."

While rescuers and state media rushed to the disaster scene, China's active social media users filled the information gap. They posted photos of people fleeing to streets for safety and of buildings flattened by the quake. They shared information on the availability of phone services, apparently through data services.

 

[Sinkie]

Did the Pope tweet his prayer and send his condolences?

 

[MortalKombat]

Did the Pope tweet his prayer and send his condolences?

Let's hope that his reason is "not yet" otherwise the Chinese are worse than Arabs and Muslims.

http://www.irna.ir/en/News/80618984...ence_message_to_Iran,_Pakistan,_quake_victims

 

[Sinkie]

Let's hope that his reason is "not yet" otherwise the Chinese are worse than Arabs and Muslims.

http://www.irna.ir/en/News/80618984...ence_message_to_Iran,_Pakistan,_quake_victims

He must be busy with Sunday mass, so give him one more day.

 

[MortalKombat]

China: over 200 dead in Sichuan earthquake

Thousands of rescue workers combed through flattened villages in southwest China on Sunday in a race to find survivors from a powerful quake as the toll of dead and missing rose past 200.

<iframe src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/w7obUaCumZ0?rel=0" allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" width="560"></iframe>

By By Tom Phillips in Lushan County and Malcolm Moore in Beijing
9:20AM BST 21 Apr 2013

The Ministry of Civil Affairs put the number of dead at 179 and missing at 24, with almost 11,500 injured, 960 of them seriously.

On Saturday night, the Daily Telegraph became the first foreign news organisation to reach the epicentre of the quake, witnessing the devastation at Lushan county, on the outskirts of Ya'an, a city of roughly 1.5 million in Sichuan province.

Huge slabs of concrete that had sheared off buildings lay by the side of the road, while survivors camped out amid the rubble in blue rescue tents.

"I was very scared, it felt like it was shaking for an hour," said Li Xiaoqin, a ten-year-old girl sitting by the side of a fire with her family in the village of Yuqi.

Her mother, Li Zhongmin, said the family of ten had fled their wooden house, which had been obliterated by the quake. "The first thing that went through my mind was to run. We got outside as soon as everything started shaking."

The initial quake, at just after 8am, was judged to be 6.6 magnitude by the United States Geological Survey and 7 magnitude by the Chinese authorities.

There were a further nine aftershocks over the course of the next hour, triggering m&d slides in the tall mountains around the epicentre.

The quake occurred along the same Longmenshan fault line that ruptured during the 2008 Wenchuan earthquake, a 7.9 magnitude disaster that claimed some 68,000 lives.

A single road to the disaster zone was blocked off by police yesterday in order to control the flow of traffic in and out of the area.

Every few hundred feet, huge boulders had rolled down from the mountains above and crashed into the tarmac, while the force of the earthquake had also opened gaping crevasses in the road, hampering the rescue effort.

The 80 mile journey from Chengdu, the provincial capital, took more than six hours, with frequent halts as soldiers dynamited obstacles on the road.

The village of Longmen was said by locals to have been the worst hit. Wang Zhenglun, a 60-year-old headmaster, said he was leading a team of volunteers to Longmen. "I have spoken to another teacher there, and they said 99 per cent of the houses had collapsed," he said.

Along the road to the epicentre, hundreds of People's Liberation Army trucks were providing food and aid, while firefighters, black-clad SWAT teams and civilian volunteers were all pouring up the mountain through Gaohe as the hunt for survivors continued. By last night, more than 51 people had reportedly been pulled from the rubble.

As darkness fell on the mountainous region, those trying to escape the worst hit villages brought with them horrific tales of destruction. "One girl has lost her legs," said Wang Yufang, a 60-year-old construction worker from Qiankou village, not far from the epicentre.

As the extent of the damage became clear, the Chinese authorities launched a level one emergency rescue plan, and the Chinese prime minister, Li Keqiang, flew first to Chengdu and then onto Lushan by helicopter.

Additional reporting by Zhao Rongkun

An aerial view shows houses damaged in Lushan county, Ya'an, Sichuan province (Reuters)

Some 7,000 soldiers were also mobilised to help unblock roads and search the debris while convoys of helicopters ferried the dead and injured out of the more remote areas of the disaster zone.

"The current most urgent issue is grasping the first 24 hours since the quake's occurrence, the golden time for saving lives," said Mr Li, according to the official Xinhua news agency.

In another complication, rain started to fall on the region last night and forecasts suggested there would be more rain in the coming days. The China Meteorological Administration warned of possible landslides and other geological disasters.

The local earthquake administration added that there had been a total of 712 aftershocks by last night.

"It is a mountainous rural area, which was also badly hit by the 2008 earthquake, with many houses destroyed and needing to be rebuilt," said a statement from the International Red Cross, which was scrambling to provide assistance.

"Local authorities say that several key roads are blocked, making it challenging for rescue teams to get to the worst-hit townships within Lushan County, some of which are believed to be very badly damaged," it added.