In addition to the dead, injured and hundreds of homes destroyed, the population was exposed to the elements on a winter night with freezing temperatures, making the situation more difficult for survivors. Many people did not return home out of fear after nine post-earthquake aftershocks left at least 126 people dead, while Xi Jinping's government pleaded with local authorities to hurry.
First change: December 19, 2023 – 7:19 p.m
4 mins
A magnitude 6.2 earthquake struck citizens of Jishisian District at midnight on Monday, November 18th. Gansu and Qinghai provinces in China's mountainous northwest region reported massive damage, more than 730 injuries and problems with electricity and water supplies.
Rescue teams are continuing their operations this Tuesday despite collapsed buildings and landslides, a task made increasingly difficult by low temperatures of up to -15°C.
In addition to the injured and 126 dead (most in Gansu and the rest in Qinghai), local media reported 20 missing people who are being searched for with drones, excavators and bulldozers in the middle of the complicated mountainous region.
The earthquake struck at a relatively shallow depth of 10 kilometers in Jishishan county in Gansu, about five kilometers from the provincial border with Qinghai, according to the China Earthquake Network Center, while the United States China Geological Survey measured the magnitude at 5.9 .
Map of the provinces where the earthquake occurred at midnight on Monday, December 18, China. © France 24 in Spanish
At 10 a.m. local time alone, nine aftershocks of magnitude 3.0 or higher were recorded, about ten hours after the first earthquake, the largest of which was magnitude 4.1, authorities said.
Rescue measures
“The 72 hours after an earthquake when survivors are most likely to be rescued could be shortened by bad weather, putting trapped victims at greater risk,” state news agency Xinhua said.
A group of doctors and more than 2,000 firefighters were dispatched by China's executive branch and the Ministry of Emergency Management after ordering a Level II response to the incident.
The armed forces also took part in the rescue and relief operations, for which Beijing provided $28 million.
Tents are set up for residents after an earthquake in Dahejia Village, Jishishan County, northwest China's Gansu Province, Tuesday, December 19, 2023. An overnight earthquake killed several people in a cold mountainous region of northwest China, the country's state media reported Tuesday. AP
The group arrived with 2,600 tents, 10,400 folding beds, 10,400 quilts and 1,000 stove sets, in addition to the 111,500 relief items that had been provided to affected people in the region by Tuesday morning.
“The State Council has deployed a task force to the affected areas to lead relief efforts. “Gansu and Qinghai provinces have organized relief efforts with the immediate provision of supplies such as camps and folding beds,” state agency Xinhua published in Spanish.
A state-level task force was immediately deployed to the attack-affected region #Earthquake in the province #Gansuin the northwest of #China to support and monitor the work of epidemiological control and disinfection, announced the National Administration of Control and…. pic.twitter.com/uH5AlWncIX
– China Xinhua Spanish (@XHespanol) December 19, 2023
Buildings with low earthquake resistance
Although earthquakes are quite common in the mountainous region of western China that forms the eastern edge of the Tibetan Plateau, near where the Asian and Indian tectonic plates collide in the Himalayas, it is actually a region with little stability in constructing its buildings to withstand earthquakes.
The local newspaper “Global Times” assured that the number of victims was partly due to the low resistance of the buildings in this region, a scenario complicated by the timing of the earth movement, which did not provoke a response from the capacities to many people.
Some residents assured local press The Paper that at the time of the earthquake at midnight, many people were sleeping and did not have time to seek shelter.
Li Haibing, an expert at the Chinese Academy of Geological Sciences, said the relatively high death toll from the recent earthquake was partly because it was shallow. “Therefore, it caused greater tremors and destruction, even if the scale was not large,” he said.
In this aerial photo released by Xinhua News Agency, rescuers search a collapsed building in Caotan Village of Minhe Hui and Tu Autonomous County in Haidong City, northwest China's Qinghai Province, Tuesday, Dec. 19, 2023. Mountainous region in northwest China, the country's state media reported on Tuesday. © Zhang Hongxiang/Xinhua via AP
In September 2022, a magnitude 6.8 earthquake that struck southwest China's Sichuan Province killed 93 people. It triggered landslides and shook buildings in the provincial capital Chengdu, where 21 million residents were under a Covid-19 lockdown. 19.
However, the deadliest episodes occurred nine and 15 years ago, when the August 2014 earthquake in western Yunnan province claimed 617 lives and before that, in 2008, 70,000 people died in Sichuan province.
With AP and EFE