China Earthquake: Strong earthquake hits north-western China, 131 people died; More than 700 people injured

A strong overnight earthquake in a mountainous region of northwestern China reduced homes to rubble, forced residents outside on a bitterly cold winter night, and killed 131 people in the country’s deadliest earthquake in nine years. Officials gave this information on Tuesday.

The magnitude-6.2 earthquake struck just before midnight Monday, injuring more than 700 people, damaging roads and knocking out power and communications lines in Gansu and Qinghai provinces, according to officials and Chinese media reports.

As emergency workers searched for people missing in collapsed buildings and at least one landslide, people who lost their homes spent the cold night in tents at hastily constructed evacuation sites.

“I’m just worried, what other feelings could there be?” said Ma Dongdong, who said in a phone interview that three bedrooms in his home were destroyed and part of his milk tea shop was completely torn down.

Afraid to return home because of the earthquake’s tremors, he spent the first night in a field with his wife, two children and some neighbours.

Early in the morning, they went to a tent settlement that the mother said had about 700 people living in it. Till afternoon they were waiting for blankets and warm clothes to arrive.

The China Earthquake Network Center said the quake struck at a relatively shallow depth of 10 kilometers (6 miles) in Gansu’s Jishishan County, about 5 kilometers (3 miles) from the provincial border with Qinghai.

The U.S. Geological Survey measured the magnitude at 5.9.

State broadcaster CCTV said 113 people were confirmed dead in Gansu and 536 others were injured in the province. Eighteen other people were killed and 198 injured in Qinghai, north of the epicenter, CCTV said in an update on Wednesday morning.

By 10 a.m., about 10 hours after the initial quake, there were nine aftershocks of magnitude 3.0 or greater, the largest of which was a magnitude 4.1, officials said.

According to Chinese state-owned media, emergency authorities in Gansu issued an appeal for 300 additional personnel for search and rescue operations, and Qinghai authorities reported 16 people missing in the landslide, down from 20 previously.